To these suppositions I would add a few more
suggestions regarding the evolution of shape-contemplation out of
man's perfunctory and semi-automatic seeing of "Things." The
handicraftsman, armourer, weaver, or potter, benefits by his own
and his forerunners' practical experience of which shape is the more
adapted for use and wear, and which way to set about producing it;
his technical skill becomes half automatic, so that his eye and mind,
acting as mere overseers to his muscles, have plenty of time for
contemplation so long as everything goes right and no new moves
have to be made. And once the handicraftsman contemplates the
shape as it issues from his fingers, his mind will be gripped by that
liking or disliking expressed by the words "beautiful" and "ugly."
Neither is this all. The owner of a weapon or a vessel or piece of
tissue, is not always intent upon employing it; in proportion to its
usefulness and durability and to the amount of time, good luck, skill
or strength required to make or to obtain it, this chattel will turn
from a slave into a comrade. It is furbished or mended, displayed to
others, boasted over, perhaps sung over as Alan Breck sang over his
sword. The owner's eye (and not less that of the man envious of the
owner!) caresses its shape; and its shape, all its well-known
ins-and-outs and ups-and-downs, haunts the memory, ready to start into
vividness whenever similar objects come under comparison. Now
what holds good of primaeval and savage man holds good also of
civilized, perhaps even of ourselves among our machine made and
easily replaced properties. The shape of the things we make and use
offers itself for contemplation in those interludes of inattention
which are half of the rythm of all healthful work. And it is this
normal rythm of attention swinging from effort to ease, which
explains how art has come to be a part of life, how mere aspects
have acquired for our feelings an importance rivalling that of things.

I therefore commend to the Reader the now somewhat unfashionable
hypothesis of Semper and his school, according to which the first
preference for beauty of shape must be sought for in those arts
like stone and metal work, pottery and weaving, which give
opportunities for repetition, reduplication, hence rythm and
symmetry, and whose material and technique produce what are
called geometric patterns, meaning such as exist in two dimensions
and do not imitate the shapes of real objects.