The treatment of the nude is not delicate, but as a rule intentionally coarse. The sexual characters are so strongly marked that several writers have found in such portraitnres support for their views that phallic wor ship was prevalent in ancient America. That there was a species of adoration of the reproductive principle in nature is evident from many facts, but most of the art-products which are supposed to refer to it were clearly only the conceptions of untamed, sometimes unnatural, lusts find ing their expression in art.
Animal favorite forms from the lower species were those of the bird, the serpent, the spider, bugs, and fishes. The first two men tioned, the bird and the serpent, are equally common. They doubtless were associated in nearly all tribes with religious symbolism and social ranks. Forums of extinct animals, as the elephant, mastodon, etc., have from time to time been reported, but no example beyond the range of doubt can be adduced.
Inanimate boats, houses, articles of clothing, and implements are depicted, but these are seen rather in the picture writing than in the works of art properly so called. • Scenes from is remarked by Mr. W. H. Holmes that the engravings of the Mound-builders represent legendary creatures derived from the myths of the fathers, but are never illustrative of the customs and ceremonies of the people themselves, in this respect being similar to the designs of nearly all the native inhabitants of the area of the United States. In Mexico, Central America, and Pent, on the other hand, there
are numerous sketches from life, if we may use the expression, represent ing the processes of trades, the ceremonies of religion and of state, and incidents from the lives of heroes and chieftains.
Inspiration of American all this, and much more to the same effect which might be added, we must conclude that the inspiration of American art was derived altogether from the real, and the real in its narrowest and most literal sense. Nowhere do we perceive traces of an aspiration for something beyond the present, for conditions of existence which are incommensurate with, because loftier than, material things. Ideal beauty, organic harmony, universal truths bodied forth in propor tion and expression,—all these were undreamed of by the American race, and are not hinted at in its ripest productions; yet they were familiar to Greece when its general culture was scarcely higher than that of ancient Mexico or Peru, and are visible even iu the older and coarser products of the early Egyptian dynasties.