We must not overlook the fact, however, that defeats are often represented in unmasked form for the purpose of stirring up a revengeful spirit. But this apparent exception only proves the rule. By appealing to the wounded dignity of the people, poems and dramas of this kind serve the cravings of collective pride as effectively—although, no doubt, indirectly—as manifestations of the opposite order. An increased attention to the past, with a corresponding richness of traditional art, can also generally be found in nations where revenge is considered as a sacred duty bequeathed to descendants by their ancestors. When historic art is regarded as a means of handing down to posterity a knowledge of the present, a connection with the same group of emotions is easily discoverable. The great works of commemoration are all monuments of boasting. By the grandiloquent hieroglyphs on palaces and pyramids and by the extolling hymns that he orders to be sung in his praise, the exultant hero endeavours to win from future admirers a meed of praise which shall quench his unsatisfied thirst for glorification. Even in this case, therefore, history, in its psychological sense—that is, the concentration of attention upon times other than the present—has been born of pride. By relying on this emotionalistic interpretation we can explain the otherwise extraordinary development of commemorative art amongst tribes on relatively low stages of intellectual development. The same explanation also accounts for the artistic value of the primitive records. The intensely emotional element of exultation, pride, and boasting that pervades so many of the commemorative poems and dramas makes this kind of history an art in the proper sense of the word. It is needless to point out expressly that literary and formative arts may be used for conveying thought-contents which cannot, properly speaking, be called historical. We have restricted our attention to the unmistakably commemorative forms, because in these alone can the purpose of information be isolated with any degree of certainty. By tracing the gradual development of narrative art from those simplest manifestations in which the work is immediately connected with the real occurrence that called it into existence, up to the more complex forms of transmitted art, in which distant events are represented, we have endeavoured to keep our argument within the limits of positive research. This safe ground we should be compelled to abandon if we were to engage in the otherwise so fascinating task of unearthing historical elements in mythological tradition.