MODIFICATION BY INTENTION.
To enhance usefulness.—There can be no doubt that the desire upon the part of the archaic potter to increase the usefulness and convenience of his utensils has been an important agent in the modification of form. The earliest vessels employed were often clumsy and difficult to handle. The favorite conch shell would hold water for him who wished to drink, but the breaking away of spines and the extraction of the interior whorl improved it immeasurably. The clumsy mortar of stone, with its thick walls and great weight, served a useful purpose, but it needed a very little intelligent thought to show that thin walls and neatly-trimmed margins were much preferable.
Vessels of clay, aside from the forms imposed upon, them by their antecedents and associates, would necessarily be subject to changes suggested by the growing needs of man. These would be worked out with ever-increasing ease by his unfolding genius for invention. Further investigation of this phase of development would carry me beyond the limits set for this paper.
To please fancy.—The skill acquired by the handling of clay in constructing vessels and in efforts to increase their usefulness would open an expansive field for the play of fancy. The potter would no sooner succeed in copying vessels having life form than he would be placed in a position to realize his capacity to imitate forms not peculiar to vessels. His ambition would in time lead him even beyond the limits of nature and he would invade the realm of imagination, embodying the conceptions of superstition in the plastic clay. This tendency would be encouraged and perpetuated by the relegation of vessels of particular forms to particular ceremonies.