By such means the use of clay was discovered and the ceramic art came
into existence. The accidental indentation of a mass of clay by the
foot, or hand, or by a fruit-shell, or stone, while serving as an
auxiliary in some simple art, may have suggested the making of a cup,
the simplest form of vessel.

The use of clay as a cement in repairing utensils, in protecting
combustible vessels from injury by fire, or in building up the walls of
shallow vessels, may also have led to the formation of disks or cups,
afterwards independently constructed. In any case the objects or
utensils with which the clay was associated in its earliest use would
impress their forms upon it. Thus, if clay were used in deepening or
mending vessels of stone by a given people, it would, when used
independently by that people, tend to assume shapes suggested by stone
vessels. The same may be said of its use in connection with wood and
wicker, or with vessels of other materials. Forms of vessels so derived
may be said to have an adventitious origin, yet they are essentially
copies, although not so by design, and may as readily be placed under
the succeeding head.

+FORMS DERIVED BY IMITATION.+

Clay has no inherent qualities of a nature to impose a given form or
class of forms upon its products, as have wood, bark, bone, or stone. It
is so mobile as to be quite free to take form from surroundings, and
where extensively used will record or echo a vast deal of nature and of
coexistent art.

In this observation we have a key that will unlock many of the mysteries
of form.

In the investigation of this point it will be necessary to consider the
processes by which an art inherits or acquires the forms of another art
or of nature, and how one material imposes its peculiarities upon
another material. In early stages of culture the processes of art are
closely akin to those of nature, the human agent hardly ranking as more
than a part of the environment. The primitive artist does not proceed
by methods identical with our own. He does not deliberately and freely
examine all departments of nature or art and select for models those
things most convenient or most agreeable to fancy; neither does he
experiment with the view of inventing new forms. What he attempts
depends almost absolutely upon what happens to be suggested by preceding
forms, and so narrow and so direct are the processes of his mind that,
knowing his resources, we could closely predict