It has been remarked that in the earliest Stone Age there is no trace of either idols or images; the art of this period being entirely profane. In the later Stone Age, however, entirely different ideas seem to have gained the ascendancy, for a majority of the objects of plastic art so far discovered have a religious significance. This has evidently proceeded from the conception that every image of a living object absorbs something of the essence of the object itself, and this conception, while a primitive one, still presupposes a certain degree of development. This rule applies more especially to amulets, which were therefore fashioned as beautifully as primitive art permitted, that they might become fitting abodes for the benevolent spirits believed to animate them and render them efficacious.[10] A curious idol or talisman from Houaïlou, New Caledonia, is in the collection of Signor Giglioli. This is a stone bearing naturally a rude resemblance to the human form.[11] We can easily understand that such an object was looked upon as the abode of some spirit, for similar strange natural formations have been regarded with a species of superstitious awe by peoples much more civilized than the natives of New Caledonia. For the Middle Ages and even down to the seventeenth century, the talismanic virtues of precious stones were believed in by high and low, by princes and peasants, by the learned as well as by the ignorant. Here and there, however, a note of scepticism was sometimes apparent, as in the famous reply of the court jester of Emperor Charles V, to the question, “What is the property of the turquoise?” “Why,” replied he, “if you should happen to fall from a high tower whilst you were wearing a turquoise on your finger, the turquoise would remain unbroken.” The doctrine of sympathy and antipathy found expression in the belief that the very substance of certain stones was liable to modification by the condition of health or even by the thoughts of the wearer. In case of sickness or approaching death the lustre of the stones was dimmed, or else their bright colors were darkened, and unfaithfulness or perjury produced similar phenomena. Concerning the turquoise, the prosaic explanation can be offered that this stone is affected to a certain extent by the secretions of the skin; but popular superstition saw the same phenomena in the ruby, the diamond, and other stones not possessing the sensitiveness of the turquoise. Hence the true explanation is to be found in the prevailing idea that an occult sympathy existed between stone and wearer. The sentiment underlying the conception is well expressed by Emerson in the following lines from “The Amulet”: Give me an amulet That keeps intelligence with you,— Red when you love, and rosier red, And when you love not, pale and blue.