Foremost in rank amongst all the works of design and sculpture that have influenced artistic evolution stand the likenesses of a deceased person which are placed by the relatives on his grave or in his home. To civilised man it is most natural to look upon these effigies as tokens of loving remembrance by which the survivors endeavour to keep fresh the memory of the departed. It is also easy for us to understand that the pious feelings extended towards such effigies may acquire an almost religious character. There is something to be said therefore on behalf of the view that commemorative monuments have been the predecessors of idols proper. Lubbock, who interprets Erman’s description of the Ostyak religion[240] in this way, quotes in further corroboration _The Wisdom of Solomon_, in which work there is to be found a detailed account of the evolution of idolatry from memorial images.[241] The probability, however, is that in pictorial as well as in dramatic art the purely commemorative intention belongs to the latter stages of culture. It seems in most cases to be beyond doubt that among the lowest tribes the images serve as paraphernalia in the animistic rites. They are either taken to be embodiments of the ancestors’ soul, or receptacles in which this soul, if properly invoked, might take up its abode for the occasion. And similar superstitious notions are entertained, not only with regard to the monuments proper erected on the graves of powerful ancestors, but also with regard to such minor works as, _e.g._, the dolls which are often prepared by West African mothers when they have lost a favourite child.[242] The vague and indistinct character of these images shows us also that no intellectual record of the individual has been aimed at. No more than the poetic effusions of regret with which the pious survivors endeavour to propitiate the names of the deceased, do these formative works of “pietas” give us any information as to the personality of him whom they pretend to represent.