The primitive savage swimming in the sea found that a floating log supported his weight as he rested from his efforts.  By the strokes of his arms or of a club in his hand, he could propel this log in a desired direction; thus the dugout canoe arose, to be steadied by the outrigger as the savage enlarged his experience.  A cloth held aloft aided his progress down or across the wind, and it became an integral element of the sailing craft, which evolved through the stages of the galley and caravel to the schooner and frigate of modern times.  When the steam-engine was invented and incorporated in the boat, a new line of evolution was initiated, leading from the “Clermont” to the “Lusitania” and the battleship.

The history of clothing begins with the employment of an animal’s hide or a branch of leaves to protect the body from the sun’s heat or the cold winds.  Other early beginnings of the more elaborate decorative clothing are discerned by anthropologists in the scars made upon the arms and breast as in the case of the Australian black man, and in the figured patterns of tattooing, so remarkably developed by the natives in the islands of the South Pacific Ocean.  A visit to a gallery of ancient and medieval paintings clearly shows that the conventional modes of clothing the human body have changed from century to century, while it is equally plain that they alter even from year to year of the present time, according to the vagaries of fashion.

A brief review of the “arts of pleasure,” including music and sculpture and painting, demonstrates their evolution also.  The earliest cavemen of Europe left crude drawings of reindeer and bears and wild oxen scratched upon bits of ivory or upon the stone walls of their shelters; the painting and sculpture of early historic Europe were more advanced, but they were far from being what Greece and Rome produced in later centuries.  Indeed, the evolution of Greek sculpture carried this higher art to a point that is generally conceded to be far beyond that attained by even our modern sculptors, just as flying reptiles of the Chalk Age developed wings and learned to fly long before birds and bats came into existence.

In the field of music, the earliest stages can be surmised only by a study of the actual songs and instruments of primitive peoples now living in wild places.  No doubt the song began as a recitation by a savage of the events of a battle or a journey in which he had participated.  In giving such a description he lives his battles again, and his simulated moods and passions alter his voice so that the spoken history becomes a chant.  From this to the choral and oratorio is not very far.