608 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 
been loosely styled symbols, and, as there is no logical distinction 
between the characters impressed with enduring form and when merely 
outlined in the ambient air, all Indian gestures, motions, and attitudes, 
intended to be significant, might with equal appropriateness be called 
symbolic. Butan Indian sign-talker or a deaf-mute represents a person 
by mimicry, and an object by the outline of some striking part of its 
form, or by the pantomime of some peculiarity in its actions or relations. 
Their attempt is to bring to mind the person or thing through its 
characteristics, not to distinguish the characteristics themselves, which 
is a second step. Inthe same manner a simple pictorial sign attempts 
to express an object, idea, or fact without any approach to symbolism. 
Symbols are less obvious and more artificial than mere signs, are not 
only abstract, but metaphysical, and often need explanation from 
history, religion, and customs. They do not depict, but suggest sub- 
jects; do not speak directly through the eye to the intelligence, but pre- 
suppose in the mind knowledge of an event or fact which the sign 
recalls. Thesymbols of the ark, dove, olive branch, and rainbow would 
be wholly meaningless to people unfamiliar with the Mosaic or some 
similar cosmology, as would the cross and the crescent be to those 
ignorant of history. 
The loose classification by which symbols would include every ges- 
ture or pictorial sign that naturally or conventionally recalls a cor- 
responding idea, only recognizes the fact that every action and object 
can, under some circumstances, become a symbol. And indeed lovers of 
the symbolic¢ live in, on, and by the symbols which they manufacture. 
A curious instance of the successful manufacture of a symbol by the 
ingenuity of one man is in the one now commonly pictured of a fish to 
represent Christ. The fish for obvious reasons has been connected 
with Eurasian mythology, and therefore was a heathen symbol many 
centuries before the Christian era; indeed, probably before the creed 
of the Israelites had become formulated. It was used metaphorically 
or emblematically by the early Christians without the apparent pro- 
priety of the lamb-bearing shepherd, the dove, and other emblems or 
symbols found in the catacombs, and Didron (b) says that only in the 
middle of the fourth century Optatus, bishop of Milesia, in Africa, de- 
clared the significance of the letters of the Greek word for fish. /X¥6YS, 
to be the initials of *yc0d¢s Xpratds O20d “Yous Lwtyp, which acrostic was 
received with acclamation, and new characteristics were from time to 
time invented, adding force to the thenceforth commonly displayed 
symbol. It may be noted that when symbols, which were generally 
religious, received acceptance, they were soon used objectively as amu- 
lets or talismans. 
This chapter is not intended to be a treatise on symbolism, but it is 
proper to mention the distinction in the writer’s mind between a pic- 
torial sign, an emblem, and a symbol; though it is not easy to preserve 
accurate discrimination in classification of ideographie characters. To 
partly express the distinction, nearly all of the characters in the Win- 
