APPENDIX, 21 461

in the main text; but it is well that the reader should again contemplate them in the position which they here occupy in a general system. I recommend his especial attention to Mr. Newton’s definitions of the terms “figurative” and “symbolic,” as applied to art, in the beginning of the paper.

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In ancient art, that is to say, in the art of the Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek and Roman races, water is, for the most part, represented conventionally rather than naturally.

By natural representation is here meant as just and perfect an imitation of nature as the technical means of art will allow: on the other hand, representation is said to be conventional, either when a confessedly inadequate imitation is accepted in default of a better, or when imitation is not attempted at all, and it is agreed that other modes of representation, those by figures or by symbols, shall be its substitute and equivalent.

In figurative representation there is always impersonation; the sensible form, borrowed by the artist from organic life, is conceived to be actuated by a will, and invested with such mental attributes as constitute personality.

The sensible symbol, whether borrowed from organic or from inorganic nature, is not a personification at all, but the conventional sign or equivalent of some object or notion, to which it may perhaps bear no visible resemblance, but with which the intellect or the imagination has in some way associated it.

For instance, a city may be figuratively represented as a woman crowned with towers; here the artist has selected for the expression of his idea a human form animated with a will and motives of action analogous to those of humanity generally. Or, again, as in Greek art, a bull may be a figurative representation of a river, and, in the conception of the artist, this animal form may contain, and be ennobled by, a human mind.

This is still impersonation; the form only in which personality is embodied is changed.

Again, a dolphin may be used as a symbol of the sea: a man ploughing with two oxen is a well-known symbol of a Roman colony. In neither of these instances is there impersonation. The dolphin is not invested, like the figure of Neptune, with any of the attributes of the human mind; it has animal instincts but no will; it represents to us its native element, only as a part may be taken for a whole.

Again, the man ploughing does not, like the turreted female figure, personify, but rather typifies the town, standing as the visible representation of a real event, its first foundation. To our mental perceptions, as to our bodily senses, this figure seems no more than man; there is no blending of his personal nature with the impersonal nature of the colony, no transfer of attributes from the one to the other.

Though the conventionally imitative, the figurative, and the symbolic are three distinct kinds of representation, they are constantly combined in one composition, as we shall see in the following examples, cited from the art of successive races in chronological order.

In Egyptian art the general representation of water is the conventionally imitative. In the British Museum are two frescoes from tombs at Thebes, Nos. 177 and 170;¹ the subject of the first of these is an oblong pond,

¹ [These wall-paintings are in the Northern Egyptian Gallery.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]