Art in Theory

In course of time, heads were set upon these stones. Among many others, a Neptune at Tricoloni and a Jupiter at Tegea, both places in Arcadia, were of this kind. […] The first images of the Greeks, therefore, manifest originality in the invention and production of a figure … Four‐cornered stones with heads on them were termed by the Greeks, as it is well known, Hermæ, that is, big stones; and artists constantly kept a supply of them.

The accounts in authors and the ancient monuments will enable us to follow the progressive improvement in the conformation of this rough draught and rude beginning of a figure. At the commencement, there was observable on the middle of these stones with heads merely the difference in sex, which an ill‐shaped face probably left doubtful … At last, the upper part of the figure received its form, while the lower portion still retained its previous shape of a Hermes, yet so far modified that the separation of the thighs was denoted by an incision. […]

At last, Dædalus, according to the opinion most commonly received, began to separate entirely the lower half of these Hermæ, in the form of legs; and, as there was not sufficient skill in art at that time to fashion an entire human figure from a single block of stone, he wrought in wood; and from him the first statues are said to have received the name of Dædali….

Among the Greeks the first outlines of these images were simple, and, for the most part, straight lines; and it is probable, that, in the infancy of art, whether among the Egyptians, Etruscans, or Greeks, there was no difference in this respect. […]

In the course of time, increasing knowledge taught the Etruscan and Greek artists how to forsake the stiff and motionless conformations of their earliest essays, to which the Egyptians adhered, – compulsorily adhered, – and enabled them to express different actions in their figures.

If the idea of the ‘noble savage’ constituted a kind of minority report on the historical development of humanity, motivated largely by dissent from the mores of eighteenth‐century European society, then the conventional wisdom of those societies is embodied in the ‘four stages’ theory of human social development. According to this notion, modern societies have not fallen back from an earlier golden age, but have progressed through a series of evolutionary stages determined by the society’s underlying mode of subsistence from a condition of savagery to civilization. The theory began to coalesce in the 1750s and 60s in the work of philosophers and economists working in France and Scotland. Key early formulations were given at Glasgow University by Adam Smith in his lectures to his Moral Philosophy class in the early 1760s. The most developed form of the theory was propounded in lectures, also at Glasgow, by John Millar to his classes in the theory of government in the 1760s. Several sets of notes of these lectures have survived. Part of one of them is reprinted verbatim by Ronald Meek in his study of the evolution of the ‘four stages’ theory of human social development. Our extracts are taken from Ronald L. Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976, pp. 165–6, n. 143.

Having examined the general principles of Government, we shall consider in what manner these have been combined, so as to produce different forms of Government in different Ages.

The first object of mankind is to produce subsistence. To obtain the necessaries, the comforts, the conveniencies of life. Their next aim is to defend their persons and their acquisitions against the attacks of one another.

It is evident, therefore, that the more inconsiderable the possessions of any people, their political regulations will be the more simple. And the more opulent a nation becomes its government ought to be the more complicated.

Property is at the same time the principal source of authority, so that the opulence of a people, not only makes them stand in need of much regulation, but enables them to establish it.

By tracing the progress of wealth we may thus expect to discover the progress of Government. I shall take notice of 4 great stages in the acquisition of property.

1 Hunters and Fishers, or mere Savages.Indians of America.Some inhabitants of northern and eastern parts of Tartary.Of the Terra Australis.Of southern coast of Africa.

2 Shepherds.Greater part of Tartars. Arabs.Nations on southern coast of Africa.Ancient Germans.

3 Husbandmen.Several tribes on the southern coast of Africa.In East Indies.Towns and villages in ancient Greece and Italy.Gothic nations after their settlement in the Roman Empire.

4 Commercial people.All polished nations.’

Denis Diderot was the progenitor of the great Encyclopédie , the defining project of the European Enlightenment, which was published in Paris between 1751 and 1776. He was also a pioneering figure in the then new genre of art criticism. In the present selection, however, Diderot writes not about art but of the impact of European civilization on the peoples of Oceania. His ‘Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville’, which contains elements of the ‘noble savage’ thesis associated with Rousseau and others (cf. IIC2), takes the form of a series of dialogues in which Diderot predicts the dual programme of colonization and conversion with which the Europeans came close to destroying the indigenous cultures of Oceania. The ‘frame’ dialogue is between two ‘gentlemen’, identified only as ‘A’ and ‘B’, who are discussing Bougainville’s account of his voyage (cf. IIB3). Diderot focusses specifically on the account of Tahiti, embedding within the dialogue of ‘A’ and ‘B’ further imagined discussions between islanders and members of Bougainville’s company. In the present extracts, Diderot amplifies an incident recounted by Bougainville himself in which an old chief refrained from welcoming the Europeans while everyone else received them with friendship and gifts (pp. 141–2). Diderot has the chief denouncing to Bougainville in person the religious hypocrisy and physical violence of the Europeans, their spreading of sexually transmitted disease among the native people, and the deleterious consequences this will have for Polynesian culture. The first two parts of Diderot’s ‘Supplement’ were complete by late 1772, and it was circulated in manuscript form the following year. The extracts are taken from Denis Diderot: Political Writings , translated and edited by John Hope Mason and Robert Wokler, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 35–6 and 39–46. (Further extracts from the writings of Diderot and the Encyclopédie can be found in Art in Theory 1648–1815 IIIC7–9, 12–14, and IVA11, pp. 581–626 and 668–73.)

A –

[W]hat are you doing?

B –

I’m reading.

A –

Still the Voyage of Bougainville?

B –

Just so. […]

A –

… So what’s his assessment of savages?

B –

That the cruelty among them which has sometimes been observed is apparently due only to their daily need to defend themselves against wild beasts. The savage is innocent and gentle whenever his peace and security are left undisturbed. […] I’m quite sure of it. The life of the savage is so simple, and our societies are such complicated machines. The Tahitian is close to the origins of the world and the European near its old age. The gulf between us is greater than that separating the new‐born child from the decrepit dotard. The Tahitian either fails entirely to understand our customs and laws, or he sees them as nothing but fetters disguised in a hundred different ways, which can only inspire indignation and scorn in those for whom the love of liberty is the deepest of all feelings.