History is commonly divided into human history, natural history, and the mixture of both. Without! examining here the question of the solidity of this distinction, it is clear that artistic and literary history belongs in any case to the first, since it concerns a spiritual activity, that is to say, an activity proper to man. And since this activity is its subject, the absurdity of propounding the historical problem of the _origin_ of _art_ becomes at once evident. We should note that by this formula many different things have in turn been included on many different occasions. _Origin_ has often meant _nature_ or _character_ of the artistic fact, in which case an attempt was made to deal with a real scientific or philosophic problem, the very problem in fact which our treatise has attempted to solve. At other times, by origin has been understood the _ideal genesis,_ the search for the reason of art, the deduction of the artistic fact from a first principle containing in itself both spirit and nature. This is also a philosophical problem, complementary to the preceding, coinciding indeed with it, although it has sometimes been strangely interpreted and solved by means of an arbitrary and semi-imaginary metaphysic. But when the object was to discover further exactly in what way the artistic function was _historically formed,_ the result has been the absurdity which we have mentioned. If expression be the first form of consciousness, how can we look for the historical origin of what is not a product of nature and is presupposed by human history? How can we assign a historical genesis to a thing which is a category by means of which all historical processes and facts are understood? The absurdity has arisen from the comparison with human institutions, which have been formed in the course of history, and have disappeared or may disappear in its course. Between the æsthetic fact and a human institution (such as monogamic marriage or the fief) there exists a difference comparable with that between simple and compound bodies in chemistry. It is impossible to indicate the formation of the former, otherwise they would not be simple, and if this be discovered, they cease to be simple and become compound. The problem of the origin of art, historically understood, is only justified when it is proposed to investigate, not the formation of the artistic category, but where and when art has appeared for the first time (appeared, that is to say, in a striking manner), at what point or in what region of the globe and at what point or epoch of its history; when, that is to say, not the origin of art, but its earliest or primitive history is the object of research. This problem forms one with that of the appearance of human civilization on the earth. Data for its solution are certainly wanting, but there yet remains the abstract possibility of a solution, and certainly tentative and hypothetical solutions abound.