SYMBOLS. 541 



people at a given moment, but of the accumulation of many- 

 small inventions and ideas wliich each generation has brought 

 as its contribution to the entire work. This may be clearly seen 

 by the study of the genesis of social institutions. Ministries are 

 at this day a very complex institution, and therefore were not 

 created at one cast. What was their origin ? In Egypt, the 

 king's fan-bearer belonged to the military staff, and in time of 

 Avar commanded a division of the army. In Assyria, the king's 

 eunuchs acquired great political importance. They became the 

 monarch's counselors in peace and his generals in war. In 

 France, in the Merovingian period, the blacksmith and the cham- 

 berlain, who were personal servants of the king, became pub- 

 lic functionaries. In England, in the most ancient times, the 

 four great functionaries of state were the master of the robes, 

 the superintendent of horses, the blacksmith, and the house 

 steward. This shows that the position of minister was not de- 

 liberately created, but that when the king found, especially in 

 military affairs, that his functions were too numerous, he dele- 

 gated one to a servant. At first this could certainly have been 

 merely a temporary expedient, which through the continuance 

 of the conditions which led to it became definitive. From this 

 first sketch arose, by successive small modifications, the whole 

 political structure." 



With other examples, and by close reasoning, the author 

 closes his introduction by saying that " symbols also must be 

 regarded as the unpremeditated result of a series of small inven- 

 tions, each intended to satisfy some elementary need." 



Ferrero then passes on to the main divisions of his essay. He 

 treats first of symbols of proof, as he names them, dealing at 

 length with the written document, so important to the trans- 

 actions of modern civilization and yet so tardily produced, and 

 for a long time so incomprehensible to the multitude. Ferrero 

 describes the primitive symbols that existed to guarantee prop- 

 erty, or to mark the right of conquest, and of contracts in gen- 

 eral, particularly of matrimony, of parental authority, and of 

 adoption. After a minute examination of their origin, he writes : 

 " We see thus from these examples how symbols of this class 

 have nothing mysterious about them. They are only our written 

 documents, our citations, etc., in a less abstract and more simple 

 and primitive form. To us, accustomed to the dry and bare 

 juridical forms of our own time, these symbols make a singular 

 impression, almost as of simple and ingenuous poetry ; but we 

 may be assured that those who practiced those acts found no 

 more poetry in them than we find in our formalities. These 

 symbols are characterized by the greater simplicity of the mental 

 effort necessary to understand them, as compared with our own 



