Awake.
Intentness of mind upon a pursuit causes an equivalent intentness of
dream, and thus wild races believe their dreams to be real and
substantial things, and not mere shadows of the night. To those who do
not read or write much, even in our days, dreams are much more real than
to those who are continuously exercising the imagination. If you use your
imagination all day you will not fear it at night. Since I have been
occupied with literature my dreams have lost all vividness and are less
real than the shadows of trees, they do not deceive me even in my sleep.
At every hour of the day I am accustomed to call up figures at will
before my eyes, which stand out well defined and coloured to the very hue
of their faces. If I see these or have disturbed visions during the night
they do not affect me in the least. The less literary a people the more
they believe in dreams; the disappearance of superstition is not due to
the cultivation of reason or the spread of knowledge, but purely to the
mechanical effect of reading, which so perpetually puts figures and
aerial shapes before the mental gaze that in time those that occur
naturally are thought no more of than those conjured into existence by a
book. It is in far-away country places, where people read very little,
that they see phantoms and consult the oracles of fate. Their dreams are
real.
The mammoth came through his cave before the embers of his fire - the
sleeping savage could touch it with his flint-headed spear - there was the
crash as it fell into the prepared pit; he awakes, the dying embers cast
shadows on the walls, and in these he traces the shape of the vast
creature hastening away. The passing spirit has puffed the charred brands
into a second's flame, and thus shadowed itself in the hollow of the
cavern.
Deeper than the excitement of the chase lies that inner consciousness
which dwells upon and questions itself - the soul of the Cave-man pondered
upon itself; the question came to him, as he crouched in the
semi-darkness, over the fire which he had stirred, 'Will my form and
aerial shadow live on after my death like that which passed but now?
Shall I, too, be a living dream?' The reply was, 'Yes, I shall continue
to be; I shall start forth from my burial-mound upon the chase in the
shadow-land just as now I start forth from my cave. I shall entrap the
giant woolly elephant - I shall rejoice at his capture; we shall triumph
yet again and again. Let then my spear and knife be buried with me, but
chip them first - kill them - that I may use their spirit likenesses in the
dream-chase.'
With a keen-edged splinter of flint in the daylight he incised the
outlines of the mammoth upon a smooth portion of its tusk - its image was
associated with his thoughts of a future life, and thus Art in its
earliest inception represented the highest aspirations of man.
But could the ignorant savage of that long-lost day have been capable of
such work? The lowest race of savages in Southern Africa - the Bushmen - go
about with festoons of entrails wound around their loins. After a
successful hunt - with the pit or poisoned arrows - they remove the
entrails of the slain animal and wear them like coronals for present
ornament and future regalement. These creatures are nevertheless artists.
On the walls of caves they have painted the antelope and the lion in
bright colours; they have not only caught the shape and hue of the
animals about them, but their action and movement. The figures are in
motion, skilfully drawn and full of spirit.
If any one asks, is the application of Art to the chase really so old, so
very very old, as this? I refer them to the stars. How long ago is it
since the constellations received their names? At what date were they
first arranged in groups? Upon the most ancient monuments and in the most
ancient writings they have the same forms assigned to them as at this
day, and that too in countries remote from each other. The signs of the
Zodiac are almost as old as the stars themselves; that is, as old as the
time when the stars were first beheld of human eyes. Amongst them there
is the Archer - Sagittarius - the chase in the shape of man; greatest and
grandest of all the constellations is Orion, the mighty hunter, the giant
who slew the wild beasts by strength. There is no assemblage of stars so
brilliant as those which compose the outline of Orion; the Hunter takes
the first place in the heavens. Art exists in the imagination - imagination
drew lines from star to star, and repeated its life on earth in the sky.
So it is true that the first picture - whether drawn by the imagination
alone in the constellations, on the walls of the cave with ochre and
similar materials, or engraved with keen splinters of flint on the
mammoth's tusk - the first picture was of the chase. Animals are earliest,
the human form next, flowers and designs and stories in drawings next,
and landscape last of all. Landscape is peculiarly the art of the
moderns - it is the art of - our - civilisation; no other civilisation seems
to have cared for it. Towers and castles are indeed seen on the
bas-reliefs of Assyria, and waving lines indicate rivers, but these are
merely subsidiary, and to give place and locality to the victories the
king is achieving. The battle is the interest, the landscape merely the
stage.
