them, and are thus in marked contrast with Greek vase-painting, the history of which may be regarded as a constant struggle to represent mankind and animal creation. The Cretans took to other objects instead, which could be represented in the vigorous way they aimed at, and yet also filled the field decoratively, without any loss to the picture from the [Illustration: PLATE VI. Fig. 10. STIRRUP-VASE OF LATE MINOAN I STYLE FROM GOURNIA. Fig. 11. AMPHORA OF LATE MINOAN I STYLE FROM PSEIRA.] curve of the vessel. The vegetable world had entered the decoration of vases in the Kamares period: now it does so afresh, but in a totally different spirit. Grasses, branches, ivy, crocuses, lilies as they grow and wave in nature, surround the vases. But these people were specially concerned with the sea, marine plants and live creatures. Lotus flowers, sea-weeds and reeds wave in the water, the cuttle-fish stretches out his feelers, the nautilus swims about, starfish and snails, corals and sea-anemones surround the living objects, and dolphins gambol around. What impelled the Cretan vase-painters thus unweariedly to represent the marine world exclusively on vases? The explanation can only be sought in that supreme law of the development of artistic style, the talent for invention in a few pioneer brains and the slowness in invention of the many. The excellent idea of having the cool liquid in the vases surrounded by this decorative play of marine life, which filled the field and was so life-like, perhaps came from a single gifted brain. The idea became popular, and the common run of vase-painters created countless variations of the theme. The excellent naturalism directly inspired by nature, which it transfers with a bold brush to the vases, is limited to a short creative period: immediately the schematic and conventional assert themselves; life disappears, but fixed decorative formulæ remain, and to them the future belongs. Moreover, the stylized ornamentation never ceased to exist alongside of the natural; nay, often appears on the same vase in conjunction with it, in the shape of wavy lines, spirals in different combinations, continuous tendrils (which are also treated naturally) or stylized plants. Thus two methods of decoration are in contrast, one ‘tectonic’ with arrangement in bands, another, which freely scatters naturalistic representations over the vase, a kind of ornament which has made almost everyone who has spoken of it adduce the parallel of Japanese art. The freely adorned vases are also most characteristic of the art of the Cretans, and show most plainly their gay and heedless manner, their free decorative work, their direct relation to nature, foreign to abstraction and idea: they set this art in contrast with the contemporary old civilizations of the Nile and Euphrates as well as with the Greek.