ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT. XXIII 



for several years surveys and examinations of tlie aboriginal 

 earthworks of eastern United States were carried forward, and 

 reports thereon were published. A necessary- collateral line 

 of research, without which the full significance of the ancient 

 earthworks could not be ascertained, related to the implements 

 and utensils of the mound-builders, and the investigation was 

 so expanded as to cover this subject ; then it was found that 

 the study of implements and utensils involved study of the 

 art products and finally of the industrial arts of the build- 

 ers, while the interpretation of the mortuary works involved 

 extended researches concerning inortuary articles and customs 

 in general; and in this way the researches were still more 

 broadly expanded. Meantime, the linguistic researches Avere 

 extended toward the fundamental elements of the art of 

 expression. Among civilized peoples thought is expressed 

 by vocables which are more or less purely arbitrary and so 

 fully differentiated as to be essentially denotive, and ideas are 

 recorded by means of characters which are almost wholly arbi- 

 trary or denotive; and to such degree has the mechanism of 

 expression been developed that the oral and visual elements 

 of expression are interwoven with thought so completely 

 that most men think in these denotive symbols, whereby 

 thought is simplified and made eas}'. Among primitive 2:>eo- 

 ples this denotive symbolism is not developed, and in lieu 

 thereof an extensive and cumbrous system of connotive or 

 associative symbols is employed. ' This primitive system of 

 expression rejjresents in a general way the prescriptorial stage 

 of human deAclopment. When the primitive peoples using 

 such a prescri})torial system of symbols possess a definite 

 social organization, this type of symbolism, like the higher 

 type, becomes interwoven with thought in curious and persist- 

 ent fashion, so that the primitive man thinks in a series of 

 symbols which seem incongruous, extravagant, even bizarre, 

 to the civilized thinkei'; and therein lies the chief difterence 

 between primitive and civilized ■ modes of thought — a difi^er- 

 ence so profound that few civilized men ever comprehend the 

 mental workings of the uncivilized man, while it is doubtful 

 whether any uncivilized man ever comprehends the mentation 



