Evolution of Expression — Volume 1Emerson, Charles Wesley
Science
Evolution of Expression — Volume 1
Emerson, Charles Wesley
Elocution; Recitations
The study of all forms of art, so far as methods are concerned,
should be progressive. For correct guidance in our search for the
best methods, we must understand the order of the development of
the human mind. A child, before he arrives at an age where he can
be taught definitely, is simply a little palpitating mass of
animation. Soon he begins to show an attraction toward surrounding
objects. Next he begins to show a greater attraction for some
things than for others. His hands clutch at and retain certain
objects. He now enters the period of development where he makes
selections, and thus is born the power of choice. Objects which,
at first, appeared to him as a mass now begin to stand out clearly
one from another; to become more and more differentiated, while
the child begins to separate and to compare. Thus the brain of the
child passes through the successive stages from simple animation
to attraction, to selection or choice, to separation or analysis.
This principle of evolution, operating along the same lines, is
found in the race as in the individual. In all man's work he has
but recorded his own life or evolution. All history, all
religions, all governments, all forms of art bring their testimony
to this truth, and in each the scholar may find these successive
stages of development.
In the age of Phidias the art of sculpture reached its maturity.
No race and no people have ever surpassed the consummate
achievements of that period. But this perfection was the result of
a process of evolution. There had been graduated steps, and those
same steps must to-day be taken in the education of the artist.
Art had passed into its second period before authentic Greek
history began. The first stage was shown in that nation so justly
called the "Mother of Arts and Sciences." In Egypt we find
probably the first real manifestations of mind in art forms. They
are colossal exhibitions of energy, such as the Temple of Thebes,
seven hundred feet in length, statues seventy feet tall, monuments
rearing their heads almost five hundred feet in air.
"Those temples, palaces, and piles stupendous
Of which the very ruins are tremendous."
To Assyria we turn in our search for the next step in the progress
of art. Here we find the artists making melodramatic efforts to
attract the attention and fascinate the mind with weird and
incongruous shapes of mongrel brutes and hydraheaded monsters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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