Abstract

Rogery Fry in Last Lectures threw out the suggestion that the inferiority of neolithic to palaeolithic painting might be due to the birth or growth of language and the consequent temptation to dull the vivid sensibility for individual life by the practically useful habit of abstract or generalized thinking. Whether or no the birth and growth of language involved a set-back for graphic and plastic art, it certainly first made poetry possible. And the question which puzzles me is this: Would any art analogous to poetry have been possible without speech? What if a tongue-tied race had invented a system of ideograms or purely conventional gestures?