DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5538#0133
THE GREAT SPH1XX.
IV.
THE ORIGIN OF PORTRAIT SCULPTURE,
AND THE HISTORY OF THE "KA."
It has been said by a celebrated poet that "the proper
study of mankind is man." This sweeping proposition was
accepted as an axiom by the contemporaries of the ingenious
Mr. Pope; but to our nineteenth century ears it sounds, per-
haps, too much like an epigram. We should. I think, prefer
to say that the most interesting study of mankind is man.
Certain it is, that whatsoever concerned man in the past
concerns and interests ourselves in the present. Hence the
eagerness with which we track his footsteps down the path
of the centuries. From that far-distant age when we catch
our first glimpse of the prehistoric cave-dweller chipping
flint arrow-heads wherewith to wage war against the hyena
and the mammoth, down to the pleasant "teacup time" of
the day before yesterday, when Adam carried a clouded cane
8
IV.
THE ORIGIN OF PORTRAIT SCULPTURE,
AND THE HISTORY OF THE "KA."
It has been said by a celebrated poet that "the proper
study of mankind is man." This sweeping proposition was
accepted as an axiom by the contemporaries of the ingenious
Mr. Pope; but to our nineteenth century ears it sounds, per-
haps, too much like an epigram. We should. I think, prefer
to say that the most interesting study of mankind is man.
Certain it is, that whatsoever concerned man in the past
concerns and interests ourselves in the present. Hence the
eagerness with which we track his footsteps down the path
of the centuries. From that far-distant age when we catch
our first glimpse of the prehistoric cave-dweller chipping
flint arrow-heads wherewith to wage war against the hyena
and the mammoth, down to the pleasant "teacup time" of
the day before yesterday, when Adam carried a clouded cane
8