Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/701

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ART—ART
639

so far as concerns one-half of war, the defensive half. But war continued to be an honourable pursuit, because it was a pursuit associated with birth, power, and wealth, as well as with the virtue of courage, in cases where it had no longer the plea of utility, but was purely aggressive or predatory ; and the arts of the chase have stood in this

respect in an analogous position to those of war.

There are other arts which have not had their origin in positive practical needs, but have been practised from the first for pleasure or amusement. The most primitive human beings of whom we have any knowledge, the cave- dwellers of the palaeolithic period, had not only the useful art of chipping stones into spear-heads, knife-heads, and arrow-heads, and making shafts or handles of these imple ments out of bone; they had also the ornamental art of scratching upon the bone handle the outlines of the animals they saw mammoth, rhinoceros, or reindeer or of caning such a handle into a rude resemblance of one of these animals. Here we have a skill exercised, in the first case, for pure fancy or pleasure, and in the second, for adding an element of fancy or pleasure to an element of utility. Here, therefore, is the germ of all those arts which pro duce imitations of natural objects for purposes of entertain ment or delight, as painting, sculpture, and their subordi nates ; and of all those which fashion useful objects in one way rather than another because the one way gives pleasure and the other does not, as architecture and the subordinate decorative arts of furniture, pottery, and the rest. Arts that work in a kindred way with different materials are those of dancing and nrnsic. Dancing works with the physical movements of human beings. Music works with sound. Between that imitative and plastic subdivision, and the subdivision of these which only pro duce motion or sound and pass away, there is the inter mediate subdivision of eloquence and the drama, which deal with the expression of human feeling in spoken words and acted gestures. There is also the comprehensive art of poetry, which works with the material of written words, and can ideally represent the effects proper to any or all of the other arts. All of these arts have, as a matter of history, been at one time or another intimately associated with religion. Painting, sculpture, architecture, drawing, music, poetry, have all been at one time or another prin cipally devoted to the honour of supernatural beings imagined to have power over mankind for good and evil. But this use, though a part of their history, is not insepa rable from their nature. What is inseparable from them, and essential to the nature of this group of arts, is twofold. First, of their effect upon those to whom they are addressed : there are certain highly complex properties and relations of rhythm, proportion, and harmony, .upon which the pleasur- ableness of these arts depends, and which each of them, if its appeal to the perceptions and the imagination is to be successful, is bound to observe. Secondly, of the mode in which they are practised : these complex effects can only be produced by the exercise of an equally complex set of faculties in the artist; it is therefore of the essence of this group of arts, that they cannot be practised by habit, rote, or calculation ; habit, rote, and calculation may help the artist a certain way, but in the essential parts of his art he passes beyond the reach of rules, and acts by what is called inspiration, that is, by the spontaneous and unrea soned working together of infinitely complex and highly developed sensibilities and dexterities in his constitution.

We shall not concern ourselves with the many definitions that have been framed by thinkers seeking to classify these arts either according to simple observation and comparison, or according to the principles each of his chosen meta physical system. (For an account of these matters, see articles Esthetics and Fine Arts.) Enough that together with the useful arts, there exists this great group of arts of which the end is not use, but pleasure, or pleasure before use, or at least pleasure and use conjointly, In modern language, there has grown up a usage which has not only put these and their congeners into a class by themselves, but sometimes appropriates to them alone the use of the generic word Art, as if they and they only were the arts, [ Greek ]. First as the liberal or polite arts, and then as the fine arts, the languages of modern Europe have separated from the class of arts which exist only for use the class which exist only or chiefly for pleasure. They have gone further, and have reduced the number which the class-word is meant to include. When Art is now currently spoken of in this sense, not even music or poetry is frequently denoted, but only architecture, sculp ture, and painting by themselves, or with their subordinate, and decorative branches. And in correspondence with this usage, another usage has removed from the class of arts, and put into a contrasted class of manufactures, a largo number of industries and their products, to which the generic term Art, according to our definition, properly applies. That definition covers the mechanical arts, which can be efficiently exercised by mere habit, rote, or calcula tion, just as well as the fine arts, which have to be exercised by a higher order of powers. But the word Art, becoming appropriated to the fine arts, has been treated as if it neces sarily carried along with it, and as if works to be called works of art must necessarily possess, the attributes of individual skill and invention expressing themselves in ever new combinations .of pleasurable contrivance. The progress of what an older nomenclature called the mechani cal arts the consequence of inventions for making pro duction easier and more rapid by the application of physical agencies and the economising of human labour has led to the multiplication of products all alike, all equally bearing the stamp of habit, rote, and calculation, and all equally destitute of those properties of individual contrivance and pleasureableness. And so works of Manufacture, or the products of machinery, which bear only very dully and remotely the mark of their original source in the hand and brain of man, have come to be contrasted with works of Art which bear such marks vividly and directly. For a century the mechanical kingdom, or reign of pure Manu facture, had spread apace in Europe, engrossing an ever larger field of human production. Of late years there is a sign of a reaction in favour of an extension of the kingdom of Art, or at least of endeavours to bring reconciliation and alliance between the two.

(s. c.)

ART and PART, a. term used in Scottish Law to denote the aiding or abetting in the perpetration of a crime, the being an accessory before or at the perpetration of the crime. There is no such offence recognised in Scotland as that of being an accessory after the fact.

ARTA (Narda, i.e., [&nsbp;Greek ], or Zarta, i.e., [ Greek ], the ancient Ambracia), a town of Albania, in the eyalet of

Joannina, deriving its present designation from a corruption of the name of the river Arachthus on which it stands. It is a place of some six or seven thousand inhabitants, who are mostly Greek. There are a few remains of its old cyclopic walls ; and the town contains a castle, built on the lofty site of the ancient citadel by Nicephorus (1357); a palace belonging to the Greek Metropolitan ; and a number of mosques, synagogues, and churches, the most remarkable being the church of the Virgin of Consolation, founded (1071) by Michael Ducas. The streets of the town were widened and improved in 1869. Manufacture of woollens, cottons, Russian leather, and embroidery is carried on, and there is trade in cattle, wine, tobacco, hemp, hides, and grain. Much of the neighbouring plain is very fertile, and the

town is surrounded with gardens and orchards, in which