DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.73713#0117
RAPHAEL MENGS. 112
that impression which things leave in our brain,
in the meantime the same impression can re-
turn to the memory to represent the same pre-
cision. These ideas are more or less clear and
distindt according to the greater or lesser inten-
sity with which our understanding receives them,
and according to its capacity of distinguishing
and determining the most essential parts of
things. Few are the inventions which owe
not their beginning to chance; that is, to that
combination whicli we give this name, because
we are ignorant of its cause. The arts of de-
sign have apparently their origin, as I have said,
from the inclination and desire of imitating
things; from whence arosethe PlasticA; it being
very natural that men first conceived the
idea of imitating human figures, or of animals,
with earth moulded together with the hands,
and that then by chance, or by ressection, they
baked them by the fire, to make them more
hard and durable.
History fhows not, with precision, the progres-
sion of this art; but it is very natural that it was
thus, because we know that even after the perfec-
tion of the arts, there have still been people who
used statues of baked earth; and being besides
of the most remote antiquity the art os building
witli bricks,and giving them a certain form, and
of baking them, it is very likely that in the
same time came to men the idea of forming and
baking sigures of the same material. Some au-
thors pretend that the Terafins or housnold Gods
of Laban, stolen by Racheles, were Images of
Q
VOL. II.
that impression which things leave in our brain,
in the meantime the same impression can re-
turn to the memory to represent the same pre-
cision. These ideas are more or less clear and
distindt according to the greater or lesser inten-
sity with which our understanding receives them,
and according to its capacity of distinguishing
and determining the most essential parts of
things. Few are the inventions which owe
not their beginning to chance; that is, to that
combination whicli we give this name, because
we are ignorant of its cause. The arts of de-
sign have apparently their origin, as I have said,
from the inclination and desire of imitating
things; from whence arosethe PlasticA; it being
very natural that men first conceived the
idea of imitating human figures, or of animals,
with earth moulded together with the hands,
and that then by chance, or by ressection, they
baked them by the fire, to make them more
hard and durable.
History fhows not, with precision, the progres-
sion of this art; but it is very natural that it was
thus, because we know that even after the perfec-
tion of the arts, there have still been people who
used statues of baked earth; and being besides
of the most remote antiquity the art os building
witli bricks,and giving them a certain form, and
of baking them, it is very likely that in the
same time came to men the idea of forming and
baking sigures of the same material. Some au-
thors pretend that the Terafins or housnold Gods
of Laban, stolen by Racheles, were Images of
Q
VOL. II.