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Show 54 SYMBOLS, EMBLEMS AND SIGNS. than directly suggested by it, is invented to express it by some representation or analogy, while a 83>- mbol may be evolved by a process of thought from the concept itself; but it is no very exhaustive or practically useful distinction. Symbols are less obvious and mqre artificial than mere signs, require convention, are not only abstract, but metaphysical, and often need explanation from history, religion, and customs. Our symbols of the ark, dove, olive branch, and rainbow would be wholly meaningless to people unfamiliar with the Mosaic or some similar cosmology, as would be the cross and the crescent to those ignorant of history. The last- named objects appeared in the lower class of emblems when used in designating the conflicting powers of Christendom and Islamism. Emblems do not necessarily require any analogy between the objects representing and those, or the qualities, represented, but may arise from pure accident. After a scurrilous jest the beggar's wallet became the emblem of the confederated nobles, the Grueux, of the Netherlands; and a sling, in the early minority of Louis XIV, was adopted from the refrain of a song by the Frondeur opponents of Mazarin. The several tribal signs for the Sioux, Arapaho, Cheyenne, & c, are their emblems precisely as the star- spangled flag is that of the United States, but there is nothing symbolic in any of them. So the signs for individual chiefs, when not merely translations of their names, are emblematic of their family totems or personal distinctions, and are no more symbols than are the distinctive shoulder- straps of army officers. The crux ansata and the circle formed by a snake biting its tail are symbols, but consensus as well as invention was necessary for their establishment, and our Indians have produced nothing so esoteric, nothing which they intended for herme-neutic as distinct from mnemonic purposes. Sign- language can undoubtedly be employed to express highly metaphysical ideas, indeed is so employed by educated deaf- mutes, but to do that in a system requires a development of the mode of expression consequent upon a similar development of the mental idiocrasy of ttiu gesturers far beyond any yet found among historic tribes north of Mexico. A very few of their signs may at first appear to be symbolic, yet even those on closer examination will probably be relegated to the class of emblems, as was the case of that for " Partisan " given by the Prince of WIED. By that title he meant, as indeed was the common |
