statue. We often hear
the complaint that a work of art is too highly finished, and it wearies
and displeases us because it leaves nothing for the imagination to
supply. The remark reveals the fact, of which we are all implicitly
conscious, that we are ourselves in part the artificers of every
external phenomenon.

We need not stop to prove a truth well-known to all, that architecture
and all kinds of monuments lend themselves to a symbolism derived from
ancient and primitive popular ideas. This was the case in India,
Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Egypt, Judaea, Greece, Ancient and Christian
Rome, and in the ancient remains found in savage countries and in
America. The freemasons of the Middle Ages united the earliest and most
varied traditions with the symbols of Christianity. We unconsciously
carry on the same traditions, preserving some of their forms, although
the meaning of the symbol is lost. Tombs in the open air which enclosed
a spirit, and round which the shades roamed, were the first sacred
buildings, from which by an easy and intelligible evolution of ideas,
temples, with a similar orientation, and other works of architecture,
both religious and civil, were derived. If we follow, step by step, the
development of the tomb into the temple, the palace, and the triumphal
arch, we shall see how the outward form and the human and cosmic myth
were reciprocally enlarged. Ethnography, archaeology, and the history of
all peoples indicate their gradual evolution, so that it is only
necessary to allude to it; proofs abound for any intelligent reader.
Even in modern architecture the arrangement of parts, the general form,
the ornaments and symbols relating to mythical ideas, still persist,
although we are no longer conscious of their meaning; just as human
speech now makes use of a simple phonetic sign as if it were an
algebraic notation, in which the philologist can trace the primitive and
concrete image whence it proceeded. The arts also, like other human
products, follow the general evolution of myth in their historic course;
the primitive fetish is afterwards perfected by more explicit spiritual
beliefs, and is combined with cosmic myths; these are slowly transformed
into symbolic representations, which dissolve in their turn, and give
place to the expression of the truth and to forms which more fully
satisfy the natural sense of beauty and its adaptation to special ends.

The arts of singing and of instrumental music have