but only so far as the originating and creative power is concerned, which, once set in motion, had to grow and to develop according to definite and immutable laws. To trace this development step by step in general outlines, from time relative to the mythical and traditional periods, and thence to the age of history, is the aim of our manual. In generalising thus, and separating the special from the universal, we are enabled to embrace at once with greater clearness a wider range of knowledge, and to give to the treatment of art-history a more elevated and useful character. By a suppression of details, the great periods and features of a common development are rendered more intelligible, and our reasoning faculty is enabled to grasp that which might otherwise escape our limited powers of comprehension. CHAPTER III. PRE-HISTORIC AND SAVAGE ART. Art, like nature, is its own interpreter. A well-finished pattern has not preceded a more simple one; circular ornamentations are of a later date than ornamentations with straight lines. The cave-habitation must have been in use before the construction of independent temples. Art must have had a beginning like language; for it is a language--a language in forms, speaking to our eyes. If what the Arabs say is true, that the best description is that in which the ear is transformed into an eye, the best picture will be one that transforms our eyes into ears. Art speaks through light, as language through sounds. We have tried to discover by means of philology--which in modern times has become a science--a more or less close relationship between idioms and idioms; in the same way we try to trace some general primitive types from which we may deduce the innumerable works of art. In times long by-gone we find traces of man’s inventive and decorative force. The products of that force even in pre-historic ages widely differ in their degrees of workmanship. There are more or less finished hatchets, chisels, knives, arrow-heads, paal-stabs, celts and armlets. The ornamentation, from mere varying straight lines, goes over into spiral forms of different direction and combination. We have therefore no difficulty in classifying the products of pre-historic art in the following way:-- _a._ The Palæolithic, or old stone age. _b._ The Neolithic, or new stone age. _c._ The Bronze age, and _d._ The Iron age. The first two subdivisions belong to savage life, the third to the mythical or traditionary, and the fourth to the historical periods. During the old stone age we have scarcely any traces of ornamentation; during the new stone age we find some attempts at geometrical lines, and some sketches of animals on ivory blades; during the bronze age we have winding and twisting patterns of excellent geometrical design; and, finally, during the iron age, animals and even human forms are used as means of ornamentation.