M'Lennan's _Patriarchal
Theory_ seem overpowering.

[230] _Studies in Ancient History_, p. 212.

[231] _Fortnightly Review_, Oct., 1869: 'Archaeologia Americana,' ii.
13.

[232] Suidas, 3102.

[233] Herod., i. 173. It is not agreed that the Lycians were Aryans,
but surely the Locrians were!

[234] Cf. Bachofen, p. 309.

[235] Compare the _Irish Nennius_, p. 127.

[236] Tacitus, _Germania_, xx.

_THE ART OF SAVAGES._[237]

'Avoid Coleridge, he is _useless_,' says Mr. Ruskin. Why should the
poetry of Coleridge be useful? The question may interest the critic,
but we are only concerned with Mr. Ruskin here, for one reason. His
disparagement of Coleridge as 'useless' is a survival of the belief
that art should be 'useful.' This is the savage's view of art. He
imitates nature, in dance, song, or in plastic art, for a definite
practical purpose. His dances are magical dances, his images are made
for a magical purpose, his songs are incantations. Thus the theory
that art is a disinterested expression of the imitative faculty is
scarcely warranted by the little we know of art's beginnings. We shall
adopt, provisionally, the hypothesis that the earliest art with which
we are acquainted is that of savages contemporary or extinct. Some
philosophers may tell us that all known savages are only degraded
descendants of early civilised men who have, unluckily and
inexplicably, left no relics of their civilisation. But we shall argue
on the opposite theory, that the art of Australians, for example, is
really earlier in kind, more backward, nearer the rude beginnings of
things, than the art of people who have attained to some skill in
pottery, like the New Caledonians. These, again, are much more
backward, in a state really much earlier, than the old races of Mexico
and Peru; while they, in turn, show but a few traces of advance
towards the art of Egypt; and the art of Egypt, at least after the
times of the Ancient Empire, is scarcely advancing in the direction of
the flawless art of Greece. We shall be able to show how savage art,
as of the Australians, develops into barbarous art, as of the New
Zealanders; while the arts of strange civilisations, like those of
Peru and Mexico, advance one step further; and how, again, in the
early art of Greece, in the Greek art of ages prior to Pericles, there
are remains of barbaric forms which are gradually softened into
beauty. But there are necessarily breaks and solutions of c