The danger of such mistakes is all the greater when one has to deal with the lower stages of artistic development. In point of fact recent ethnological researches have conclusively proved that it is not only difficult, but quite impossible, to apply the criterion of æsthetic independence to the productions of savage and barbarous tribes. It is true that the large province of primitive art has not as yet in its entirety been made the subject of systematic study. But, on the other hand, the results which have been arrived at with regard to decoration, its most typical form, amply bear out our view. In almost every case where the ornaments of a tribe have been closely examined, it has appeared that what to us seems a mere embellishment is for the natives in question full of practical, non-æsthetic significance. Carvings on weapons and implements, tattooings, woven and plaited patterns, all of which the uncritical observer is apt to take for purely artistic compositions, are now explained as religious symbols, owners’ marks, or ideograms. There is still room for discussion as to whether in certain individual interpretations the tendency to look for concealed meanings has not been carried too far. But there can be no doubt that the general principles which to many students seemed so fantastic when first formulated by Stolpe, Read,[13] and others, have derived additional support from every fresh inquiry into primitive systems of decoration. The isolated researches which have been carried on within the department of primitive literature and drama all point in the same direction. Wherever ethnologists have the opportunity of gaining some insight into the inner life of a savage tribe, they are surprised at the religious or magical significance which lies concealed behind the most apparently trivial of amusements. And it is to be remarked that they have learned to appreciate this esoteric meaning, not by a closer study of the manifestations themselves, but through information acquired by intercourse with the natives. There is often not a single feature in a savage dance which would give the uninitiated any reason to suspect the non-æsthetic purpose. When North American Indians, Kaffirs, or Negroes perform a dance in which all the movements of the animals they hunt are imitated, we unavoidably see in their antics an instance of primitive but still purely artistic drama. It is only from the descriptions of Catlin, Lichtenstein, and Reade[14] that we learn that these pantomimes have in reality quite as practical a purpose as those imitations and representations of animals by which hunters all over the world try to entice their game within shooting distance. According to the doctrine of sympathetic magic, it is simply an axiomatic truth that the copy of a thing may at any distance influence the thing itself, and that thus a buffalo dance, even when it is performed in the camp, may compel the buffaloes to come within range of the hunters.