Page:Three Lectures on Aesthetic (1915).djvu/37

22 decorative patterns sprang originally from the lotus flower; others which said that they sprang from the shapes of garden beds; others ascribed many of them to conventionalisation of curves when adapted to basket work; another theory I have seen which referred all expression to the concavity and convexity of curves, the concave being receptive and the convex repellent; and there is some one reviving an old theory of spirals to-day. I believe the store of such suggestions to be unlimited. And I do not doubt that they and thousands like them indicate sources of stimuli by which now and again one or another person’s imagination has been set in motion.

ii. I quote a portion of an explanation of this kind. “Here is a jar, equally common in antiquity and in modern peasant ware. Looking at this jar one has a specific sense of a whole. To begin with, the feet press the ground while the eyes fix