Page:The disappearance of useful arts.djvu/5

 THE DISAPPEARANCE OF USEFUL ARTS.

The civilized person, imbued with utilitarian ideas, finds it difficult to understand the disappearance of useful arts. To him it seems almost incredible that arts which not merely add to the comfort and happiness of a people but such as seem almost essential to his very existence should be lost. He assumes that the loss is only to be accounted for by such factors as the total lack of raw material or the occurrence of some catastrophe which has wiped out of existence every person capable of practising the art. The object of this tribute to Professor Westermarck is to show that arts of the highest utility have disappeared in Oceania and to suggest that the causes of the disappearance are not of a simple character but that there must be taken into account social and magico-religious, as well as material and utilitarian, factors. I shall deal with three objects: &mdash; the canoe, pottery and the bow and arrow. THE CANOE. It might be thought that, if there was one art of life which would have been retained by people living in small groups of islands, it would be the art of navigation. Even putting aside the need for intercourse between the inhabitants of different islands of a group and with the inhabitants of other groups, one would have thought that its usefulness in obtaining food would have been sufficient to make people strain every resource to the utmost to preserve so necessary an object as the canoe. Nevertheless we have clear evidence