Abstract
IN a little book on “The Revolutions of Civilisation,” with abundant illustrations of the arts of many ages, Sir Flinders Petrie has sketched out a sequence of rise and decline of civilisations in eight periods from the dawn of history, six of them between 6000 B.C. and A.D. 2000. It is through the arts that the sequence is manifest: the several arts keep an order of precedence, they reach in turn a maximum of development; and in turn decay. In each period sculpture is the first of the arts to reach its maximum phase, followed by pictorial arts and then in turn by literature, mechanics, and finally by wealth. So also, in each period, the first signs of decay are manifest in sculpture; the decay of pictorial arts comes next. Medieval civilisation developed its maximum phase of sculpture in the thirteenth century, of painting at the end of the fourteenth, of literature at the end of the fifteenth; we are now in the maximum phase of mechanics, and all we have in prospect before our period goes out and the ninth becomes dominant is a maximum of wealth.
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