Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/66

56 ornaments, and these are frequently attached to the person. Man in civilization still wears ornament "when he is a warrior, an officer, or a courtier." In all these cases we simply have survival of ornament in these conservative relations.

(b) The search for ornament is as universal as the social inequality from which it has been derived. We have seen that in its very beginnings ornament was a distinction. It was intended to mark a man from his fellows as one who had done what others had not accomplished. As the mark of social inequality it will exist wherever class distinctions are recognized.

(c) Jewelry in ornament tends to grow more and more delicate with advancing civilization, and finally disappears as social distinctions vanish. The first part of the proposition is shown by history. Ornament may be traced in Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and wherever there is actual progress toward true civilization ornament dwindles. The proposition as a whole grows out of the preceding. There is no place for ornaments in a true democracy where equality prevails. A revival of ornament indicates the retardation of democratic ideas.

(d) In our first lecture we referred to mutilations made to admit of ornament-carrying. We saw that ears, noses, cheeks, lips, and other parts are or have been pierced for insertion of ornaments. These mutilations tend to disappear with advancement, and those which are most painful disappear first. The least painful of these is ear-piercing, and we know that it still lingers in many cases where all other mutilations have disappeared.

(e) In ornament as in dress we find much in the way of survival that is interesting. Mougeolles claims that in the various head ornaments used as emblems of rank or power we have bits of history. He maintains that in very ancient Egypt masks were worn by hunters and warriors of the heads of slain animals. These are represented upon gods and goddesses in the bas-reliefs. The most commonly represented are made from heads of lions, jackals, etc. Isis wears a beef's head. Dog-headed figures are common. These animal head-dresses copied in other material continue in use, and, gradually conventionalized, lose their original form. He believes the crown was derived from a lion's head, the miter from that of a jackal, the Greek helmet from a horse's head.

(f) Notice the importance, in its results, of personal vanity. Without it we believe that man would have remained low in civilization. To the desire to mark himself off from his fellows by a visible sign we owe dress development; to it we owe a long list of important arts, chief among them perhaps that of metal-working; to it we owe much of the scientific method of studying the world around us: for, impelled by it, man first began to investigate Nature, beyond what was necessary to secure a food-supply