The desire to emphasize form made itself felt in the application of lines to the rim. We also observed the tendency of the rim designs to become exuberant and to encroach upon the decorative field. No less important is the tendency to attach ornament to prominent places of the decorated object and to divide the decorative field according to fixed principles. While the features so far considered are common characteristics of art the world over, they do not explain the style of separate areas. We considered this problem in some detail in the field of decorative art. Here our attention was first arrested by the fact that purely formal art, or perhaps better, art that is apparently purely formal, is given a meaning endowing it with an emotional value that does not belong to the beauty of form alone. It is an expressionistic element that is common to many forms of primitive art. It is effective because in the mind of the tribes certain forms are symbols of a limited range of ideas. The firmer the association between a form and a definite idea, the more clearly stands out the expressionistic character of the art. This is true in the graphic and plastic arts as well as in music. In the former a geometrical form, in the latter a sound cluster, a particular type of musical phrasing, if associated with a definite meaning, evokes definite emotions or even concepts. A study of these conditions shows also that a uniform reaction to form is indispensable for the effectiveness of an expressionistic art, a condition which is not fulfilled in our own modern society, so that an expressionistic art can appeal only to a circle of adepts who follow the lines of thought and feeling developed by a master. Symbolic art can still be applied successfully in the case of a few symbols that have fixed associations which are valid for all of us.