them. In the earliest known art of
the world, a reindeer hunt may be scratched in outline on the flat side
of a clean-picked bone, and a reindeer's head carved out of the end of
it; both these are flint-knife work, and, strictly speaking, sculpture:
but the scratched outline is the beginning of drawing, and the carved
head of sculpture proper. When the spaces inclosed by the scratched
outline are filled with color, the coloring soon becomes a principal
means of effect; so that, in the engraving of an Egyptian-color
bas-relief (S. 101), Rosellini has been content to miss the outlining
incisions altogether, and represent it as a painting only. Its proper
definition is, 'painting accented by sculpture;' on the other hand, in
solid colored statues,--Dresden china figures, for example,--we have
pretty sculpture accented by painting; the mental purpose in both kinds
of art being to obtain the utmost degree of realization possible, and
the ocular impression being the same, whether the delineation is
obtained by engraving or painting. For, as I pointed out to you in my
Fifth Lecture, everything is seen by the eye as patches of color, and of
color only;--a fact which the Greeks knew well; so that when it becomes
a question in the dialogue of Minos, "[Greek: tini onti te opsei horatai
ta horomena]," the answer is "[Greek: aisthesei taute te dia ton
ophthalmon delouse hemin ta chromata]."--"What kind of power is the
sight with which we see things? It is that sense which, through the
eyes, can reveal _colors_ to us."

33. And now observe that, while the graphic arts begin in the mere
mimetic effort, they proceed, as they obtain more perfect realization,
to act under the influence of a stronger and higher instinct. They begin
by scratching the reindeer, the most interesting object of sight. But
presently, as the human creature rises in scale of intellect, it
proceeds to scratch, not the most interesting object of sight only, but
the most interesting object of imagination; not the reindeer, but the
Maker and Giver of the reindeer. And the second great condition for the
advance of the art of sculpture is that the race should possess, in
addition to the mimetic instinct, the realistic or idolizing instinct;
the desire to see as substantial the powers that are unseen, and bring
near those that are far off, and to possess and cherish those that are
strange. To make in some way tangible and visible the nature of the
gods--to illustrate a