Evolution in Art: As Illustrated by the Life-histories of Designs

by Alfred C. Haddon

“I believe that this symbol of the motion of the sun became transformed into a mystic symbol, precisely because it was a metaphorical symbol. The signification of a pictographic symbol can not be forgotten, for the sensation of the symbol directly recalls the image or the idea of the object; there are not in that case intermediate states of consciousness which can be eliminated. But when it concerns a metaphorical symbol, these intermediate states of consciousness exist, for the symbol must be interpreted, especially if a very imperfect and rude delineation is in question, whose relation to the object represented is of the slightest. The figure of a tree directly recalls to me the idea or image of the tree; but a circle drawn with three or four legs does not directly suggest to me in itself the precise idea of the motion of the sun; there is at least the possibility of different interpretations, and at all events there must be an original and independent act of interpretation. The significance of the symbol, finally, can only be known if one undertakes an investigation of induction and interpretation, or if one associates with an inspection of the symbol the remembrance of an explanation which has been given, or of an interpretation which we had formerly discovered for ourselves.

“Now this state of consciousness, which serves for the interpretation of the symbol, would have been necessary if the symbol of the cross had ministered to the needs of existence, to commerce or politics, for example; but as it was a religious symbol whose use did not vary according to the truth and the exactness of its interpretation, it is evident that this state of consciousness would become useless in the long run, and the brain would relieve itself of it in a short time. The croix gammée (fylfot) was, like genuflexions and the other mimic symbols of ceremonial, a symbol employed in relation with the divinity; accordingly, the same cause which rendered useless in the ceremonial the state of consciousness, which we have called γ,[197] has rendered useless the state of consciousness which could interpret the solar signification of the cross. It was, in short, a religious symbol employed in relation to God; rightly or wrongly interpreted as it may be, prayer and other propitiations tended to the same result; the state of consciousness which served for its interpretation was then not necessary, and the brain little by little relieved itself from it. This state of consciousness being eliminated, it was forgotten that the sign of the cross represented the sun, because this was a metaphorical symbol too vague to directly recall the idea of solar movement.

“When the state of consciousness which served for the interpretation of the design was gradually eliminated, all the religious sentiments which had the sun and its cult for their object were addressed to the cross; that is why it has become the object of so profound a veneration, without any one knowing its signification or origin; the cross reaps for its profit the inheritance of the solar cult of which it has ceased to be a symbol, in order to become almost a divinity by itself. The cross thus became a mystic symbol of which the applications became very numerous, and even very confused.

“All this, I repeat, is only a supposition, but it may enable us to affirm that, whatever may be the origin of the cross, its evolution, very probably, can only be explained from the point of view of the theory of the ideo-emotional arrest.”

A. Note on Mental Inertia.

Signor G. Ferrero has studied what he terms “mental inertia” and “the law of least effort,” as applied to the mind, and he finds that the mental operation may stop short at certain points; thus he distinguishes (1) mental arrest, (2) emotional arrest, and (3) ideo-emotional arrest.

(1.) The first is due to a deficiency in logic; as, for example, when machinery was first introduced, the workmen smashed the machines, regarding them as the cause of the fall in wages, and being ignorant of the fact that the altered conditions were caused by complicated economic conditions, and not by the machines.

(2.) An analogous phenomenon occurs in the domain of the emotions. An emotion is not isolated, it is always one link of a chain. The emotions are always associated with a more or less great number of images or ideas which define them. But the image or the idea of the thing which should define the emotion sometimes dwindles or entirely disappears; it then follows that the emotion, instead of being associated with the image or with the idea of this thing, is associated with the symbol which represents this thing; it stops short at the symbol instead of projecting itself beyond the symbol towards the thing represented.

This is the emotional arrest. It is notorious that in religion the adoration which should be paid to God in heaven is often arrested at the images which represent the divinity, as when the elders of Israel said, “Let us fetch the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of Shiloh unto us, that, when it cometh among us, it may save us out of the hand of our enemies ... and the Philistines were afraid, for they said, God is come into the camp.”[198]