In all aspects of life may be observed the controlling influence of pattern, that is of some typical form of behaviour. As we think in a pattern of objective, material causality, primitive man thinks in a pattern in which subjective causality is an important element. As our personal relations to blood relatives are determined by the pattern of our family, so the corresponding relations in other societies are governed by their social patterns. The interpretation of the pattern may change, but its form is apt to continue over long periods. The same stability of pattern may be observed in the art products of man. When a definite type has once been established, it exerts a compelling influence over new artistic attempts. When its control continues over a long period it may happen that representations are cast in an iron mould and that the most diverse subjects take similar forms. It appears then as though the old pattern had been misunderstood and new forms had developed from it. Thus, according to Von den Steinen, the figurines on carvings from the Marquesas, which originally represented two figures back to back, have determined the type of entirely new representations, or, as he prefers to put it, they have been misunderstood and developed in new ways. I do not doubt that in some cases this process of misinterpretation occurs, but it is not the one that interests us at this place. Striking examples of the overmastering influence of a pattern may be found in many parts of the world. The style of the Northwest coast of America is so rigid that all animal figures represented on plain surfaces are cast in the same mould (see pp. 185 et seq.); the overwhelming frequency of the spiral in New Zealand is another example; the interwoven animal figures of early medieval Germanic art; the angular patterns of the North American Indians (see p. 176); all these illustrate the same condition. In an art, the technique of which does not admit the use of curved lines and in which decorative patterns have developed, there is no room for curved lines, and the curved outlines of objects are broken up into angular forms. The patterns, or as we usually say, the style, dominates the formal as well as the representative art. However, the style is not by any means completely determined by the general formal tendencies which we have discussed, nor by the relations between these elements and the decorative field, but it depends upon many other conditions.