Finally we have the Aryan, the long or oval-headed man (dolichokephalous), the historical, the white man, the crowning product of the cosmical forces of nature. His facial lines are composed of the two conflicting elements, the horizontal and the vertical line, and are framed in by an oval. His amount of brain is on an average 92 cubic inches, and his facial angle 90 degrees. His development is not limited. This group of mankind, though divided into many different types (races or nations), which have arisen from an intermixture with the other two groups, or through the influences of climate, food, and the aspect of nature, stands at the highest point of civilisation. As the lines of his face are admirably counterbalanced, and his body is a master-piece of regularity and proportion, he has tried to establish a perfect balance between the conflicting forces in his moral and intellectual nature. To him exclusively we owe art in its highest sense. Once he stood on the same level with the primitive black savage, then he advanced to the ingenuity of the yellow man, and left both far behind him in his gradual but always progressive development. He surpasses the other two groups of humanity, not only in technical skill, but especially in inventive and reasoning power, critical discernment, and purity of artistic taste. The white man alone, has produced idealised master-pieces in sculpture and painting.

      The white man in his architecture uses either the horizontal or the vertical line, or both; he takes the triangular building of the negro and places it on the square tent of the yellow man, making his house as perfect as possible; he goes further, and, in accordance with his powerfully-arched brow, over-arches not only rivers and chasms, but builds his magnificent cupolas and pointed arches, the acme of architectural forms.

      Ethnology then serves us as a foundation for the study of art in its different phases.

      Conforming to the general tendency of modern science, we have tried to express the cause of the artistic development of the three groups of humanity by figures; we have measured the seat and instrument of our intellectual faculty, and have thus tried to leave the sphere of mere conjecture, or unfounded opinion, in order to place the phenomena of art-history on a firm basis. Though art, undoubtedly, belongs ‘to the magic circle of the imagination, and the inner powers of the mind,’ those powers are dependent on our very bodily construction, the amount of brain and the facial angle. We do not deal in mere hypothesis, but submit to our readers a complete theory borne out by facts.

       In considering the frontispiece of our manual, representing the ‘Tree of Art,’ we can visibly trace the slow and gradual development of the white man. The negro fixes our attention only as savage; the yellow man has a line of his own, and has remained stationary in his artistic development; the white man has passed through the savage stages, and by his own exertions, undergoing various phases of rise and decline (the real signs of historical vitality), has steadily progressed till he began to attempt, and to succeed in bringing about, ‘a harmonious connection between the representation of nature and the expression of awakened emotion, and a mysterious analogy between the emotions of his mind and the phenomena perceived by his senses.’

      As all phenomena must take place in space and time (the two fundamental forms of all existence), the products of art must also have been executed under these two conditions, and can therefore be treated historically.

      Space is the expansion and extension of the forces of nature into the infinite. Time is the limitation of this activity. Without space no object could arrive at completion. Without time the subject would be eternal. These are the two counteracting elements. The one, space, is positive—the other, time, negative. Time is either relative or absolute. If relative, it can be measured by an ascertained succession of events. If absolute, it becomes measurable by years. In both we can trace a gradual and successive development of artistic forms. In general, time relative, with its succession of products, is more reliable than time labelled with voluntary and more than doubtful dates. For instance, we cannot measure the periods of the formation of the earth’s crust by years, and still we are perfectly convinced that the tertiary formation could not have taken place before the primary; thus we are justified in assuming that the iron period must have succeeded the stone or bronze period; bronze instruments never being found with iron handles, whilst iron blades have ornamented wooden or bronze handles. Man naturally scarcely ever uses the worse material for a practical purpose when he has once found a better one; but he will use the softer material as a means of ornamentation.

      That we have plenty of ‘survivals’ in art, as well as in nature, does not in any way militate against the strict logic of facts. The lowest forms of animals have mostly survived (like the lowest forms of ornamentation), yet no one can doubt or deny the gradual and systematic development of the vegetable and animal kingdoms. If we find no fragments of pottery in Australia, New Zealand, or the Polynesian islands, we cannot assume that a grand and powerful civilisation has perished there, leaving no traces behind. In finding different kinds of pottery, gradually improving even in the quality of the material—the clay being first unwashed, then mixed with grains of quartz and felspar, next carefully washed, then sun-baked, then fire-baked; first hand and then wheel turned, and at last glazed, unornamented or ornamented—we cannot assume that the order was inverted, and that man first ornamented glazed pottery, which he turned out on the wheel, and then went back to unwashed clay and hand-made pottery. The ‘degeneration theory’ has exploded as entirely as the geocentric and anthropocentric theories have vanished. We know that man, like flowers, trees, rocks and animals, is the product of the combined forces of nature and the influences of climate and food, and that his religious, social, and political conditions are closely reflected in his art. As little as our globe is the centre of the universe, or man the centre of creation, so little did art or science spring at once perfectly