Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/405

 CHAPTER XL INDUSTRIAL ARTS. Pottery, Among the bequests which primitive communities have left us, the largest place must be given to objects depending upon what we have called industrial arts. Some societies, those that succeeded each other in and around the citadel of Troy for example, reveal themselves to us by monuments of this class alone. In the collection of objects that reach us from the oldest strata of the mound at Hissarlik, there is scarcely one which has anything to say to art pure and simple, e.g. that which is not content to administer to the most pressing wants of man, but impresses on the material it employs forms each one of which is the outward expression of thought or of a particular feeling. The main, nay, almost the sole interest which so rudimentary a plastic art offers to the historian, resides in the fact that it informs him of the beginnings and earliest progress of indispensable industries. It is not in the nature of art to attain to any degree of power and variety, except in regions where practical knowledge is suffi- ciently advanced, and the material to hand of a kind which may be easily worked. Too great an effort in this direction is sure to paralyze its inspiration. Art is prefaced by the handicrafts ; it can only unfold and grow where technique and all it implies are already widely diffused. We cannot, therefore, totally ignore productions that are the offspring of manual labour. On the other hand, we do not propose to dwell so long on this study as when Egypt, Chalda^a, and Assyria were in question. Wherever the manifold activity