There is no intention here to undervalue the methods which are nowadays employed in the study of decorative art, and which, indeed, the writer himself has endeavoured to apply in some earlier studies on art-theory. In the present research, however, it would be inappropriate to trace in detail the evolution by which forms originating in mere utility—as in basket-work—are gradually transformed into patterns or other artistic decorations; for this process, however fertile in effects it may be considered, cannot account for that phenomenon which, above all, constitutes the main object of our investigation. Although the psychical causes adduced above undeniably have called into existence some of the most familiar ideas in decoration, they cannot possibly explain the importance which decoration itself has attained in the various human societies. And the same remark evidently applies to all the other psychological sources from which art may be derived. The play-impulse, for example, no doubt suggests a concrete source, but it can in no way explain the important position which art occupies as a leading factor in social life. In order to understand why even in the lowest stages of development art has been acknowledged as a purpose worthy of being seriously pursued, we must investigate this activity in its connection with the most important biological and sociological purposes of life. We propose in the following chapters to examine the most powerful non-æsthetic factors that have favoured the origin and development of the several art-forms. And while we are keeping in view especially such utilitarian requirements as those of intellectual information, of stimulation for work or war, of sexual propitiation or of magic efficiency, we shall be compelled to leave out of consideration all distinctively æsthetic factors and conditions. Accordingly we shall not be able to maintain in this historical and ethnological inquiry the strictest æsthetic distinctions. But we hope that the unavoidable vagueness in our terminology will not obscure those limitations and demarcations which have—perhaps even too laboriously—been laid down in the first part of this work. To preserve consistency between our inquiries into the abstract and the concrete origins of art, it need only be stated, once and for all, that the several works and manifestations, as they are to be treated hereafter, are, strictly speaking, only the raw material of art, if art is to be considered in the purest sense as an autotelic activity. CHAPTER XII ART AND INFORMATION