THE MIGRATION OF SYMBOLS. 671 



• 



(except in Wales and Cornwall) by the Teutonic invaders, whom 

 the older school histories taught us to consider as our exclusive an- 

 cestors. When the existence of the -older, dwarfish, Euskarran or 

 Neolithic race was discovered, it was at first supposed that they 

 had in like manner been made a clean sweep of by the Celts. Re- 

 cent researches have made it probable that this was by no means 

 the case ; indeed, Mr. Grant Allen thinks that there is a consider- 

 able Euskarran element in the English population of to-day. The 

 black-haired aborigines — what was left of them — gradually amal- 

 gamated with the light-haired and blue-eyed Celts ; and these were, 

 in turn, absorbed by the English properly so called. And we have 

 seen that the Griquas and other mixed races exist in Cape Colony, 

 some, at least, of whom have shown themselves capable of being 

 respectable and useful in their generation ; and it is at least pos- 

 sible that these mixed races may survive, and in time amalgamate 

 with the Bantu.— The Gentleman's Magazine.' 



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THE MIGRATION OF SYMBOLS. 



By the COUNT GOBLET D'ALVIELLA. 



I. 



MEN, to communicate their thoughts, address themselves some- 

 times to the ear, by speech, song, or music ; sometimes to 

 the eye, by gesture, drawing, and the plastic arts generally, includ- 

 ing writing. These modes of expression may have an imitative 

 character, as when a savage describes an animal by its cry, or as 

 in a photograph ; but even then they have a symbolical bearing, 

 in that they recall only some of the features of the original, and 

 leave the rest to the imagination or to memory. We might define 

 a symbol as a representation which does not aim to be a reproduc- 

 tion. Reproduction supposes that the representative sign is iden- 

 tical with, or at least like, the object represented ; symbolism de- 

 mands only that one may recall the other, by a natural or conven- 

 tional association of ideas. In this sense there is nothing that 

 may not furnish matter for a symbol. We live among symboli- 

 cal representations, from the flags over our public buildings to the 

 bank-note in our strong-box ; symbolism is mingled with all our 

 intellectual and social life, from the morning hand-shaking to the 

 applause we give to the actor in the evening. Our arts are sym- 

 bolical, even when they are believed to be only servile imitations 

 of nature. We speak and write in symbols — and even think in 

 them, according to the philosophical systems that are based on 

 our impotency to grasp the reality of nature. 



Sentiment, particularly religious sentiment, recurs most largely 



