when the great
oracle voiced this assertion discoveries had already been made in
England that, when interpreted as they have been since, were to make the
landing of Caesar seem, by comparison, a contemporary occurrence. Now
this inconceivably remote prehistoric era furnishes not merely
arrowheads and stone chisels and burial mounds, but also other objects
that are the background of that "picture of time" of which the book of
to-day is the foreground.

Very properly these are objects of art, and they afford the earliest
illustrations in histories of art as they do in histories of the book.
Thus the printer who questions what art has to do with his business
stamps himself as two hundred thousand years behind the times. They are
pictures, and the book of to-day has descended as directly from them as
the printer of to-day has descended from the man who made them. They
are, moreover, in some instances, works of very high art. The picture of
the mammoth, scratched on a fragment of the mammoth's tusk, is a piece
of drawing so skillful that only the greatest living masters can equal
it. Not even Rembrandt's drawing of the elephant, which Dr. Holmes
celebrates in one of his poems, is more expressive or wrought with more
economy of effort. In the same district of southwestern France,
Dordogne, that yielded the drawings are found long cave galleries of
paintings representing the creatures of that period, all executed with
great spirit and ability. But what are the steps in the descent from
these ancient pictures to the printed book?

Primitive man had one more string to his conversational bow than most
civilized people have, namely, sign language. But gesture and speech
alike prevail but little against space and time. Each is possible only
at short range, and each dies on the eye or ear that receives it.
Pictures may be carried to any distance and may be preserved for any
length of time. They were probably made first in response to an instinct
rather for art than for the communication of ideas; but their great
advantage for communication must have been perceived very early, and, as
we find picture writing employed by primitive races to-day, we have the
right to infer that prehistoric peoples at the same stage of culture
also employed it. Pure picture writing, however, does not suffice for
all that men have to say. It is easy to represent a house, but how shall
we represent a home? It is easy to represent a woman, but how shall w