Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/34

 music is pleasing because harmonic music is pleasing, but in a higher degree; harmonic music is pleasing because melodic music is pleasing, but in a higher degree; melodic music is pleasing because rhythmic music is pleasing, but in a higher degree.

In music, as in architecture, the pleasure is developed by differentiating and integrating the elements, that is, by higher and higher organization.

We must now consider the nature of graphic art and its evolution through the four stages of culture which we have denominated the hunter stage, the shepherd stage, the tyrant stage, and the freedom stage.

Sculpture—Hunter man carves images of various objects in wood, shell, bone, and stone; he also molds such forms in clay. This is the first form of graphic art as discovered in ethnology, which is the science of tribal culture. Now, there is a special motive in this stage of society urging men to excellence in primitive sculpture. Much of the time of wildwood men, or men of the hunter stage, is devoted to the pursuit of religious activities. Dancing is always a religious activity with primitive men, and it is the primeval system of worship. But to this element another is added, that of representing to the gods the desires of men; for this purpose an elaborate system of representation is developed. The gods worshiped are the animals, but all things known to wildwood men are animals. The celestial bodies are animals traveling in a path along the firmament, from east to west, where they turn again to find their way underground to the east. All rocks are animals fixed to the earth by magic or scattered loosely upon the earth because, being asleep, their ghosts have departed, for that is the theory of sylvan life. Trees and smaller plants are animals fixed to the earth by necromancy. Clouds are animals, streams are animals, seas are animals, and the clouds are ever descending upon the earth and migrating by streams to the sea, for every drop of water is an animal.