There is indeed at first but little in Greek pottery to differentiate it from that of other nations possessing any decorative instincts. As M. Pottier[3] has pointed out, there is a universal law which manifests itself in nascent art all over the world: “More than once men have remarked the extraordinary resemblance which the linear decoration of Peruvian, Mexican, and Kabyle vases bears to the ornamentation of the most ancient Greek pottery. There is no possibility of contact between these different peoples, separated by enormous distances of time and space. If they have this common resemblance at the outset of their artistic evolution, it is because all must pass through a certain phase, resulting in some measure from the structure of the human brain. Even so at the present day there are savages in Polynesia who, by means of a point applied to the soft clay, produce patterns exactly similar to those found on Greek or Cypriote pottery of fifteen or twenty centuries before our era.” Or to take a later stage of development, the compositions of vase-paintings of the sixth century B.C. are governed by the same immutable laws of convention and principles of symmetry as the carvings of the Middle Ages. Instances might be multiplied _ad infinitum_; but the principle is universal. * * * * * A question that may be well asked by any visitor to a great museum is, What is the use of the study of Greek vases? The answer is, that no remains of Greek art have come down to us in such large quantities, except perhaps coins, and certainly none cover so long a period. Portraying as they do both the objective and subjective side of Greek life, they form perhaps the best introduction to the study of Greek archaeology in general. In no other class of monuments are the daily life and religious beliefs of the Greeks so vividly presented as in the painted vases. Their value to the modern student may be treated under four separate heads: (1) Ethnological; (2) Historical; (3) Mythological; (4) Artistic. (1) =Ethnological.=—On this subject we have already touched in this chapter, pointing out that pottery has an exceptional importance, not only as one of the most universal and instructive illustrations of the early developments of a single nation, but for purposes of comparison of one nation with another. Sculpture, painting, architecture, and other arts have a more limited range, and tell us nothing of domestic life or social progress; but the common utensils of daily life, like flint implements or bronze weapons, are of incalculable value for the light that they throw on the subject, and the evidence which, in the absence of historical data, they afford. We have also called attention to the prevalence of universal laws acting on the development of the early art of all nations.