390 SIGN LANGUAGE AMONG NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
poses. Sign language can undoubtedly be and is employed to express 
highly metaphysical ideas, but to do that in a symbolic system requires 
a development of the mode of expression consequent upon a similar de- 
velopment of the mental idiocrasy of the 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. 
The point urged is that while many signs can be used as emblems and 
both can be converted by convention into symbols or be explained as 
such by perverted ingenuity, it is futile to seek for that form of psycho- 
logic exuberance in the stage of development attained by the tribes now 
under consideration. All predetermination to interpret either their 
signs or their pictographs on the principles of symbolism as understood 
or pretended to be understood by its admirers, and as are sometimes 
properly applied to Egyptian hieroglyphs, results in mooning mysticism. 
This was shown by a correspondent who enthusiastically lauded the 
Dakota Calendar (edited by the present writer, and which is a mere figu- 
ration of successive occurrences in the history of the people), as a numer- 
ical exposition of the great doctrines of the Sun religion in the equations 
of time, and proved to his own satisfaction that our Indians preserved 
hermeneutically the lost geometric cultus of pre-Cushite scientists. 
Another exhibition of this vicious practice was recently made in the 
interpretation of an inscribed stone alleged to have been unearthed near 
Zanesville, Ohio. Two of the characters were supposed, in liberal ex- 
ercise of the imagination, to represent the A and 2 of the Greek alpha- 
bet. At the comparatively late date when the arbitrary arrangement 
of the letters of that alphabet had become fixed, the initial and con- 
cluding letters might readily have been used to represent respectively 
the beginning and the end of any series or number of things, and this 
figure of speech was employed in the book of Revelations. In the at- 
tempted interpretation of the inscription mentioned, which was hawked 
about to many scientific bodies, and published over the whole country, 
the supposed alpha and omega were assumed to constitute a universal 
as well as sacred symbol for the everlasting Creator. The usual menu 
of Roman feasts, commencing with eggs and ending with apples, was 
also commonly known at the time when the book of Revelations was 
written, and the phrase ‘‘ab ovo usque ad mala” was as appropriate as 
“from alpha to omega” to express “from the beginning to the end.” 
In deciphering the stone it would, therefore, be as correct in principle 
to take one of its oval and one of its round figures, call them egg and 
apple, and make them the symbols of eternity. In fact, not depending 
wholly for signiticance upon the order of courses of a feast or the acci- 
dent of alphabetical position, but having intrinsic characteristics in ref- 
erence to the origin and fruition of life, the egg and apple translation 
would be more acceptable to the general judgment, and it is recom- 
mended to enthusiasts who insist on finding symbols where none exist. 
