its ideal sanctions will develop more or less
harmoniously into what is called a school of art.

[Sidenote: Magic authority of man's first creations.]

The first felt utilities by which plastic instinct is sanctioned are of
course not distinctly aesthetic, much less distinctly practical; they
are magical. A stone cut into some human or animal semblance fascinates
the savage eye much more than would a useful tool or a beautiful idol.
The man wonders at his own work, and petrifies the miracle of his art
into miraculous properties in its product. Primitive art is incredibly
conservative; its first creations, having once attracted attention,
monopolise it henceforth and nothing else will be trusted to work the
miracle. It is a sign of stupidity in general to stick to physical
objects and given forms apart from their ideal functions, as when a
child cries for a broken doll, even if a new and better one is at hand
to replace it. Inert associations establish themselves, in such a case,
with that part of a thing which is irrelevant to its value--its material
substance or perhaps its name. Art can make no progress in such a
situation. A man remains incorrigibly unhappy and perplexed, cowed, and
helpless, because not intelligent enough to readjust his actions; his
idol must be the self-same hereditary stock, or at least it must have
the old sanctified rigidity and stare. Plastic impulse, as yet sporadic,
is overwhelmed by a brute idolatrous awe at mere existence and
actuality. What is, what has always been, what chance has associated
with one person, alone seems acceptable or conceivable.

[Sidenote: Art brings relief from idolatry.]

Idolatry is by no means incident to art; art, on the contrary, is a
release from idolatry. A cloud, an animal, a spring, a stone, or the
whole heaven, will serve the pure idolater's purpose to perfection;
these things have existence and a certain hypnotic power, so that he may
make them a focus for his dazed contemplation. When the mind takes to
generalities it finds the same fascination in Being or in the Absolute,
something it needs no art to discover. The more indeterminate,
immediate, and unutterable the idol is, the better it induces panic
self-contraction and a reduction of all discourse to the infinite
intensity of zero. When idolaters pass from trying to evoke the
Absolutely Existent to apostrophising the sun or an ithyphallic bull
they have made an immense progress in art and religion,