impositions. Such is the healthy response to straightforward dealing with them.

It is therefore in encouraging a healthy growth of all that is worthy and good in the existing systems of lower civilization, in repressing all mere imitations and senseless copying, and in proceeding on a rigor ously just yet genial course of conduct, that the safe and true line lies for intercourse with inferior or different civilizations.

And, lastly, the question comes home to us, In what way is this practical anthropology to be fostered? It is so essentially important to us as a race that we should take good care that it is understood. Whether it be a question of interference with the customs of higher races, as the Hindu, or of lower savages, as the Australian, momentous questions may often depend on public opinion among a mass of people in England who have no conception at present of the race with whom they are dealing. And still more needful is it for those who take part abroad in the government of other races to have a wide view of the character of various civilizations. Until the present generation, there have been two great educative influences on the view of life taken by Englishmen the Old Testament and the classics. So long as a boy had his ideas formed in contact with Oriental polygamy and Greek polytheism, he was not in danger of undue narrowness in dealing with the Muslim or the Hindu; but with the pressure of modern requirements both of these excellent views of other civilizations are being crowded out, and we meet men now to whom the world's history began when they were born. There is great danger in such ignorance. All the painful and laborious experiments in social and political problems during past ages are ignored, rash trials are made on lines which have been repeatedly proved to be impossible, and the real advance in any direction is thwarted by useless repetitions of the well-known failures of the past.

It is the business of anthropology to step in and make a knowledge of other civilizations a part of all decent education. In this direction our science has a most important field before it, at least as valuable as geography and history, and far more practical in developing ideas than many of the smatterings now taught. To present a view of another civilization, we require to give an insight into the way of looking at the world, the modes of thought, the aims of life, the checks and counterchecks on the weaknesses of man, and the construction of society and of government in each case. The origin and utility of the various customs and habits need to be pointed out, and in what way they are reasonable and needful to the well-being of the community. And, above all, we ought to impress on every boy that this civilization in which he grows is only one of the innumerable experiments of life that has been tried; that it is by no means the only successful one, or perhaps not the most successful, that there has been; that there are many other solutions of the problems of community and culture which are as good as our own, and that no one solution will fit a different race, climate, or set of conditions.

How such a sense of proportion in the world is to be attained, and what course of instruction will eradicate political fanaticism and plant a reasonable tolerance of other forms of civilization is the problem before us as practical anthropologists. The highest form of this perception of other existence is reached in the best history-writing or fiction-which enables the reader to strip himself for the time of his prejudices and view of life and reclothe the naked soul with an entirely different personality and environment. Very few writers, and those only in rare instances, can reach this level. It needs consummate knowledge, skill, sympathy, and abandon in the writer, and if without these, it is neither accurate nor inspiring. The safer course is to carefully select from the best literature of a civilization, and explain and illustrate this so as to leave no feature of it outside of the reason aud feelings of the reader. Here we run against the special bigotry of the purely classical scholar, who looks on ancient literature as a peculiar preserve solely belonging to those who will labor to read it in its orig. inal dress. No one limits an acquaintance with Hebrew, Egyptian, or Arabic authors to those who can deal with those tongues, and Greek and Latin authors ought to be as familiar to the English reader as Milton or Macaulay. To say that because it is impossible in a business education to give several years to a working knowledge of ancient languages, that therefore all thought written in those languages shall be a sealed book, is pedantry run mad. A few months or even weeks on translation will at least open the mind and give an intelligent sense of the variety and the standpoint of the intellect of the past. And such a course is certainly better than the total ignorance which now prevails on such lines where the classics are not taught.

What seems to be the most practical course would be the recognition of civilization or social life as a branch of general reading to be stimu lated in schools and encouraged by subsequent inquiry as to the extent to which it is followed and understood, without making it an additional fang of the examination demon.

The books required for such reading should cover the life of Greece, Rome, Babylon, Egypt, and Mexico in ancient times; and China, India, Persia, Russia, Spain, and one or two low civilizations, such as the Andamans and the Zulus, in modern times. Neither histories nor travels are wanted for this purpose, but a selection of the literature which shall most illustrate the social life and frame of the community, with full explanation and illustrations. We need not to excite wonder, astonishment, or disgust, but rather to enable the reader to realize the daily life, and to live in the very minds of the people. Where no literature is available, a vivid study of the nature of the practical working of their civilization should take its place.

Such is the practical scope of anthropology in our daily life, where it needs as much consideration and will exercise as great an influence Is any of the other subjects dealt with by this Association.

POLYCHROMY IN GREEK STATUARY.1

By MAXIME COLLIGNON.

In the days when Hittorff had proven conclusively in his writings. that Greek architects constantly employed polychromy, an archæolo gist, a determined adversary of the new theory, traveled all over Greece, resolved to see nothing that could be opposed to his views. One of his followers had climbed to the cornice of a temple, and while exploring it, the following dialogue was heard: "Do you find any traces of color?" "Yes!" "Come down instantly!" Unless we employ the same method, it is very difficult nowadays to doubt that the Greeks painted their statues. The question is a matter of fact, and arguments drawn merely from æsthetics, or from sentiment, can not prevail against abundant testimony.

Not only do excavations in Greece, in Olympia, Athens and Delphi furnish us many an imposing series of sculptures, uninjured by indis creet restoration and still preserving, as they came forth from the soil, traces, and sometimes actually startling traces, of painted decorations, but the catalogues of the great museums of Europe report periodically among their new acquisitions Greek marbles on which the practiced eye very quickly discovers unmistakable vestiges of painting. And who could possibly measure the harm that has been done in this respect by the fatal mania of so-called restoration and of thorough cleansing, from which we are now happily delivered? The principle of polychromy itself is no longer contested. The account of former controversies would now hardly offer more than one single kind of interest. This would be to see how a prejudice gradually declined that had been born in the days of the Renaissance, defended in the name of modern æsthetics, and yielding, step by step, and with frequent rebellions, to the reality of facts. But though on this point all discussion is at an end, yet the question remains open. In fact, it is evident that polychromy has been applied in various ways, and that during the five or six centuries in which Greek art has enjoyed an independent life, the progress made in technical matters, as well as in style, has modified the rules which controlled the painting of statues. The problem which in our day preoccupies the historians of antique art is mainly historical. What is the nature of the evolution through which polychromy has passed from the beginning of Greek art to the masterpieces produced

Translated from Revue des Deux Mondes, vol. 127, February 15, 1895.

by such great masters as Scopas and Praxiteles? Can we possibly mark all the steps and landmarks, can we determine for each period what were the rules that governed the painters of statues? The most conclusive answer would certainly be a systematic statement of the facts that have been observed. Without claiming such accuracy here," I shall endeavor to characterize, with the assistance of the most important testimony, the principal phases through which Greek polychromy has passed.1

I.

In order to explain the use of polychromy in Greece, frequent reference is made to the influence of the climate, to the peculiarity of an intense light which often blinds the sight, and which on hot summer days, drowns, as it were, the shapes of things and their outlines. At hours when the heat is less fierce, this diffusion of light seems to have no other end than to caress colored forms, and this "all joyous sky," to quote a Greek poet, would look almost offended by the cold and dim "tones," with which we must be content in our climate. This argument has not lost its value because it has so often been invoked, and we are still quite ready to acknowledge that a privileged sky has evoked in the Greeks, as in the Egyptians and the Asiatics, an instinct and a necessity for color. But polychromy exists already in primitive Hellas, long before art was sufficiently advanced to understand its laws and to analyze its harmonies. It has the same origin as the plas tie art, and a very modest beginning it is. At a time when statuary was represented, all in all, by a few wooden statues, which wandering image carvers squared with the ax and shaped with the saw and the gauge, painting was the never failing complement of the work of these implements; it serves to conceal its shortcomings and gives to the work a semblance of life. Ancient writings allude more than once to old idols, painted or gilt, and we know that when religious traditions require it, even in the classic period such wooden images were produced and adorned with colors. Thus at Delos, in the third century, a statue of this kind was ordered to be made every year, to be worshipped on the great festive day of Dionysius; it passed through the hands of the

Quatremère de Quincy was the first to undertake a systematic study of antique polychromy in the Jupiter Olympien (Paris, 1815). Much has been written on this question, and as for ancient works we must refer the reader to the list of writings given by Mr. Sittl, Archæologie der Kunst, page 414, in the Handbuch der klassischen Altertums-Wissenschaft of Iwan von Müller, Munich, 1895. We shall quote here only a few of the more recent comprehensive publications: Georg Tren, Sollen wir unsere Statuen bemalen? Berlin, 1884. Blimer, Technologie und Terminologie der Gewerbe und Künste bei Griechen und Römern, III, p. 200 and following: Th. Alt. Die Grenzen der

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und die Bunttfarbigkeit der Antike, Berlin, 1886. Geskel e und weisse Marmorskulptur. Stockholm, 1891. Th. riech. Plastik, Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst de he Greeks paint their sculptures? The Century, rial subjects will be mentioned hereafter.

painter, who received the same compensation as the sculptor.' What such daubing may have been toward the eighth century before our era, we can at least imagine easily enough, when we look at the primitive terra-cotta figures, and the popular images which have come down to us like so many cheap reductions of idol statues. This violent daubing, these red patches that stain the cheekbones, give us an impression of what this barbarous coloring may have been; and the impression would no doubt be very much the same if the impossible should happen, and we should dig up some wooden statue. To look for laws which define the use of polychromy in works that no longer exist would be building castles in the air. But what these ancient records teach us is to make allowance for the religious sentiment that dwells in these naive aesthetics which associate color with shape. According to old Greek ideas, the statue of the god is really animated by a divine power; these idols are living beings. Statues are believed to move their hands, perspire drops of blood, and impart to such as touch them a supernatural strength. They change miraculously their habitationa statue of Apollo goes and defends the walls of Corcyra. They are adorned with jewels and with clothes; they are perfumed like other beings of flesh and blood. As a matter of course, the image of the god must have every appearance of life, and art must employ all its resources, giving them both shape and color. This coloring will at first be a crude daubing, but it will please the god and the Xoavov under its layer of vermillion or of "lees of wine", and will fill the devout worshippers with the same awe with which they were later on inspired by the Athene of Phidias, resplendent at the Parthenon in all the brilliancy and glory of her rich, metallic polychromy.

We will now leave those obscure days and turn our attention to others still very distant, but such as have left us unmistakable evidence-we mean monuments. During the seventh century before our era, Greek sculpture began to employ a material that is more durable than wood. Certain privileged schools already used marble that came from Paros or Naxos, but in continental Greece the sculptors were still content with softer stone-first a friable limestone, full of shells and abounding in cavities; later, as their tools improved and they were better able to choose their material, a stone of closer grain and more resistance. The study which we are able in our day to devote to these primitive sculptures extends already over a considerable number of monuments. From the metopes of Sélinonte to the recently discovered sculptures at Delphi, belonging to the treasure of the Sycionians, a large number of such examples might be enumerated. The tufa pediments, sculptured in bas-relief or in high-relief, which were found from 1882 to 1888 in the excavations of the Acropolis at Athens, occupy a place of honor in this remarkable series of works.2

1 1 Bulletin de correspondance hellénique, 1890, page 799. Article by Homolle. 2 They have been the subject of a very comprehensive essay by Lechat, Les sculptures en tuf de l'Acropole d'Athènes, Revue archéologique, 1891.