If we keep in mind the source and origin of these arts, we must remember what has already been observed, that they spring by no means from man's love of imitation alone, but from his desire to record and commemorate experience, using the faculty of imitation as his means. Mnemosyne (Memory) was in Greek tradition the mother of the Muses; imitation, in the sense above defined, is but their instrument. Hence we might think "arts of record" a better name for this group than arts of imitation. The answer is--but a large part of pure architecture is also commemorative; from the pyramids and obelisks of Egypt down there are many monuments in which the impulse of men to perpetuate their own or others' memories has worked without any aid of imitation. Hence as the definition of a class of arts contrasted with architecture and music the name "arts of record" would fail; and we have to fall back on the current and established name of the "imitative arts." In considering them we cannot do better than follow that Aristotelian division which describes each art according, first, to the objects which it imitates, and, secondly, to the means it employs. Entry: 2
LETHE ("Oblivion"), in Greek mythology, the daughter of Eris (Hesiod, _Theog._ 227) and the personification of forgetfulness. It is also the name of a river in the infernal regions. Those initiated in the mysteries were taught to distinguish two streams in the lower world, one of memory and one of oblivion. Directions for this purpose, written on a gold plate, have been found in a tomb at Petilia, and near Lebadeia, at the oracle of Trophonius, which was counted an entrance to the lower world, the two springs Mnemosyne and Lethe were shown (Pausanias ix. 39. 8). This thought begins to appear in literature in the end of the 5th century B.C., when Aristophanes (_Frogs_, 186) speaks of the plain of Lethe. Plato (_Rep._ x.) embodies the idea in one of his finest myths. Entry: LETHE