Anyway, Neanderthal man never produced a second genius, so
far as we can tell; and that is why, perhaps, his peculiar type of
brow-ridge no longer adorns the children of men.
Before we leave the Mousterians, another side of their culture deserves
brief mention. Not only did they provide their dead with rude graves,
but they likewise furnished them with implements and food for use in a
future life. Herein surely we may perceive the dawn of what I do not
hesitate to term religion. A distinguished scholar and poet did indeed
once ask me whether the Mousterians, when they performed these rites,
did not merely show themselves unable to grasp the fact that the dead
are dead. But I presume that my friend was jesting. A sympathy stronger
than death, overriding its grisly terror, and converting it into the
vehicle of a larger hope--that is the work of soul; and to develop soul
is progress. A religious animal is no brute, but a real man with the
seed of genuine progress in him. If Neanderthal man belonged to another
species, as the experts mostly declare and I very humbly beg leave to
doubt, we must even so allow that God made him also after his own image,
brow-ridges and all.
The presence of soul in man is even more manifest when we pass on to the
Late Palaeolithic peoples. They are cave-dwellers; they live by the
chase; in a word, they are savages still. But they exhibit a taste and a
talent for the fine arts of drawing and carving that, as it were,
enlarge human existence by a new dimension. Again a fresh power has been
released, and one in which many would seem to have participated; for
good artists are as plentiful during this epoch as ever they were in
ancient Athens or mediaeval Florence. They must have married-in somewhat
closely, one would think, for this special aptitude to have blossomed
forth so luxuriantly. I cannot here dwell at length on the triumphs of
Aurignacian and Magdalenian artistry. Indeed, what I have seen with my
own eyes on the walls of certain French caves is almost too wonderful to
be described. The simplicity of the style does not in the least detract
from the fullness of the charm. On the contrary, one is tempted to doubt
whether the criterion of complexity applies here--whether, in fact,
progress has any meaning in relation to fine art--since, whether
attained by simple or by complex means, beauty is always beauty, and
cannot further be perfected. Shall we say, then, with Plato that beauty
was revealed to man from the first in its absolute nature, so that the
human soul might be encouraged to seek for the real in its complementary
forms of truth and goodness, such as are less immediately manifest? For
the rest, the soul of these transcendently endowed savages was in other
respects more imperfectly illuminated; as may be gathered from the fact
that they carved and drew partly from the love of their art, but partly
also, and, perhaps, even primarily, for luck. It seems that these
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