ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 77 



title of Jesus Christ was still more accidental, being, in the Greek 

 word iyObs, an acrostic composed of the initials of the several 

 Greek words signifying that name and title. The origin being 

 unknown to persons whose religious enthusiasm was as usual in 

 direct proportion to their ignorance, they expended much rhetoric 

 to prove that there was some true symbolic relation between an 

 actual fish and the Saviour of men. Apart from this misapplica- 

 tion, the fish undoubtedly became an emblem of Christ and of 

 Christianity, appearing frequently on the Roman catacombs, and 

 at one time it was used hermeneutically. 



The several tribal signs for the Sioux, Arapaho, Cheyenne, &c, 

 are their emblems precisely as the star-spangled flag is that of the 

 United States, but there is nothing symbolic in any of them. So 

 the signs for individual chiefs, when not merely translations of their 

 names, are emblematic of their family totems or personal distinc- 

 tions, and are no more symbols than are the distinctive shoulder- 

 straps of army officers. The crux ansata and the circle formed by a 

 snake biting its tail are symbols, but consensus as well as invention 

 was necessary for their establishment, and the Indians have pro- 

 duced nothing so esoteric, nothing which they intended for herme- 

 neutic as distinct from descriptive or mnemonic purposes. Both 

 picture writing and sign language can undoubtedly be and are em- 

 ployed 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 development 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 signs and emblems can be converted by convention into 

 symbols or be explained as such by perverted ingenuity, it is futile 

 to seek for that form of psychologic exuberance in the stage of 

 development attained by the tribes now under consideration. All 



