This, in our opinion, was the origin of drawing, and, consequently, of painting. It is worthy of remark that all works of this kind derived from the embryonic period of the arts of design betray the same lack of proportion and absence of symmetry characteristic of the silhouettes of shadows. The uniform impression given by the drawings is that they relate, not to the objects themselves, but to their shadows. It is further interesting to note that some contemporary savages, some Australians, for example, are still incapable of grasping the meaning of exact images, while they readily comprehend a crude, disproportioned drawing. Thus, to give them an idea of a man, you have to draw him with a very large head; a feature with which precisely corresponds a drawing representing a fisherman that has been found in a cave in France. He has a greatly reduced body, but his hand, armed with an enormous harpoon, is the hand of a giant.
In his struggle with surrounding Nature, a struggle of which he can not form an exact conception, primitive man had especial need to possess every means that could give him confidence in victory. In starting for the hunt he took with him, as the North American Indian does now, and as some players in our most civilized circles do under another form, the fetich that would insure success—that of an image of the animal to be killed. By engraving on the handle of his knife the image of a reindeer or some other animal, he did not think of ornamenting his weapon, but of exerting some magic power over his prey. And his belief in this mysterious power, by giving him boldness, energy, and sureness of movements, would often procure him success. Confidence does thus in all things. Just like the modern savage, the cave man would believe that the greater the resemblance between the image and the animal, the greater also would be the chance of acting upon the animal. Hence the care that was applied to the reproduction of the animals especially coveted and with which the contest would be hardest; and hence those perfect designs of the reindeer, that magnificent game of our ancestors.[1]
Very different are the characteristics of the drawings of human forms; and, to account for these differences, we should consider the fact that all the archæological data relative to the epoch of the reindeer testify that the disposition of the man of that age
- ↑ In this I differ from the students who find in some of these drawings evidence that the reindeer was a domesticated animal at that time. A representation of two reindeer has been found at Lozère, one of which wears what is regarded as a kind of halter. But the absence of fossil remains of dogs, without which domestication of the reindeer is impossible, pleads, as Carl Vogt remarks, against the existence of the domesticated reindeer. In my opinion, this supposed halter represents rather the emblematic line of which I have spoken, proceeding from the mouth to the heart, indicating the enchantment thrown at the animal by the hunter.
