I.TFE-FOEM JH AliT. 



303 



artistic figure, but nevertheless a sequence of it. The natural order of the compari- 

 son would be from B to C, the chronology being given. Bat we think it may prove 

 moi"e interesting in reviewing the entire range of art — in many portions of which we 

 have no literary complement — to present the problem and seek the solution rather 

 than to give the solution and create the problem. 



Fi'om the study of variants, the following conclusions may be drawn : 

 (1.) That the conditions determining the forms of variants m ist be exceedingly 

 diverse. A fall series may be confined within the space of a sheet of mxnnscript — 

 as is often the case in the Dresden Codex, or (as may be seen) in the ornamentation 

 of a batch of earthen pots of the same baking. On the other hand, a series may 

 extend through the entire art-range of a given people — and taken many years to have 

 completed. 



(2.) That it is necessary to remember that in some phases of variants, a single 

 feature will be selected from a complex form and serve as the basis of a distinct series 

 of changes. Thus the curve of the open mouth of the serpent seen in profile, and the 

 rattle at the end of its tail, are often dismembered from the rest of the trunk, as 

 though they were parts of a mosaic, and allowed to exist separately. The occurence 

 of this dismemberment proves that the type is not concrete. One cannot imagine 

 the Egyptian sign v ^ (priest) being rendered by either jy- or for one 



is as essential to / y the other as a cross is t ) the / — ■ letter t. 



When, in speaking of a form, like the genus Hj'^dra, which permits self-division, 

 a likelihood exists of the severed parts surviving, a low type of organization is 

 thereby implied. 



(3.) As one in studying the water-lily, finds the petals gradually turning into 

 stamens as he passes in observation from the margin to the centre of the flower, so 

 we find strange transitions occuring in the many-times repeated objects of earl}^ ai't ; 

 transitions so strange that unless we carefully observe them we would have declared 

 them to be improbable. 



(4.) In Aztec design so vast is the labyrinth of shifting form, so slight the 

 thread of consistency that guides us through it, so cumbei'some, whimsical and 

 tasteless, is much of its ornament, that it is no wonder that we are occasionally 

 puzzled, and sometimes defeated in our attempts to identify its objects. The outline 

 for example, may stand for a human leg, a hand, and a human face seen in p-i 

 profile. In some instances Ave have been unable to name outlines, and guessed / | 



only at others. The latter we have withheld from the series illustrating Aztec 



design, and can conscientiously say of such what Prescott* would say of the whole, 



* ('oii(|nest nf iMcxic >, I, 104. 



