Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/559

Rh twice, is seen also in the most ancient art of Greece, where on the bas-reliefs a forest was represented by one tree, an army by one soldier, a house by a single column.

Gradually symbols become more abstract and tend to lose their concrete character. "The consignment of a piece of sod taken from the ground in presence of the buyer and of witnesses is a concrete and material formality, almost a consignment of the earth itself; but the consignment of a bundle of straw as a sign of the sale of land or of a house is already a much more abstract symbol, because its visible connection with the thing is less, because the separation between the symbol and the thing is much greater, and man fills up the gap with the rich mental associations which are already formed in his mind. Another step, and the fragile straw too will disappear, and the material symbolism of primitive times be replaced by the more ideal forms of proof which we employ. So, little by little, almost unawares, man is brought by evolution face to face with the most complex abstract ideas."

Emotional symbols is the subject of an interesting division. Ferrero says: "We perceive that an emotion, produced by whatever cause, lasts for a certain time, then grows weaker until it is extinguished. Neither love, nor hatred, nor pleasure, nor pain are, fortunately for mankind, eternal, because, as they are also transformations of force, they cease when they have exhausted the initial quantity of energy which they possessed at their origin. We perceive also that by the law of mental inertia this emotion can not be repeated, even with reduced intensity, unless a sensation antecedently associated with the same emotion in experience excites or recalls it. Now emotional symbols are composed of those sensations which have the power to awaken dormant emotions; by the law of inertia they arise once more and reacquire their immense importance." Hence he proceeds to show how the trophy arose, and also how, from the custom of taking from the vanquished his most brilliant garments, splendid garments came to be the insignia of dominant and privileged classes, kings, princes, chiefs, to be held as tokens of authority. Ferrero makes a minute examination of the importance attached to dress in modern society, and proves how this is an excellent specimen of an emotional symbol. In support of his views he cites the words of Buckle, where he says that dress was of such importance in the sixteenth century that a person's condition was evident from his exterior, no one daring to usurp the habit of a superior class. But during the democratic movement which preceded the French Revolution the innovations of fashion were felt even in the reunions of good society. At dinners, suppers, and balls, as contemporary writers tell, dress had been so much simplified that