The origins of art; a psychological & sociological inquiry

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.
The cover was prepared by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
THE ORIGINS OF ART
A PSYCHOLOGICAL & SOCIOLOGICAL INQUIRY
YRJÖ HIRN
LECTURER ON ÆSTHETIC AND MODERN LITERATURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF FINLAND, HELSINGFORS
London MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1900
All rights reserved
The aim and scope of this book is sufficiently indicated by its title. I have endeavoured throughout to restrict my attention to questions connected with the origins of art. Points of history and criticism have been touched upon only in so far as they appeared to contribute towards the elucidation of this purely psychological and sociological problem. In order to save space as well as to spare the reader’s attention, the descriptive parts have been concentrated as much as possible. As a rule, only one ethnological example, which has been selected as typical, is described in the text, while the corroborating examples are represented by references in the footnotes. And even of these references only such are adduced as have been considered especially significant. Only in one matter have I aimed at completeness, viz. that of reference to authors from whom I have borrowed facts or observations. And whenever in earlier literature I have found theories which have appeared similar to the views advanced in this book, these similarities have been pointed out in the footnotes.
It has appeared to me that the continuity of the argument could not but have been broken if, instead of proceeding from my original starting-point, I had based my conclusions upon a critical examination of modern æsthetic doctrines. And I trust that the differences between the thesis of this book and other emotionalistic explanations will appear with sufficient clearness to the attentive reader even if they have not been expressly pointed out in the text.