shment.
When the elements or units combine in continuous zones, bands, or rays
they are placed side by side in simple juxtaposition or are united in
various ways, always following the guide lines of construction through
simple and complex convolutions. Whatever is done is at the suggestion
of technique; whatever is done takes a form and arrangement imposed by
technique. Results are like in like techniques and are unlike in
unlike techniques; they therefore vary with the art and with its
variations in time and character.

All those agencies pertaining to man that might be supposed important
in this connection--the muscles of the hand and of the eye, the cell
structure of the brain, together with all preconceived ideas of the
beautiful--are all but impotent in the presence of technique, and, so
far as forms of expression go, submit completely to its dictates.
Ideas of the beautiful in linear geometric forms are actually formed
by technique, and taste in selecting as the most beautiful certain
ornaments produced in art is but choosing between products that in
their evolution gave it its character and powers, precisely as the
animal selects its favorite foods from among the products that
throughout its history constitute its sustenance and shape its
appetites.

* * * * *

Now, as primitive peoples advance from savagery to barbarism there
comes a time in the history of all kinds of textile products at which
the natural technical progress of decorative elaboration is interfered
with by forces from without the art. This occurs when ideas, symbolic
or otherwise, come to be associated with the purely geometric figures,
tending to arrest or modify their development, or, again, it occurs
when the artist seeks to substitute mythologic subjects for the
geometric units. This period cannot be always well defined, as the
first steps in this direction are so thoroughly subordinated to the
textile forces. Between what may be regarded as purely technical,
geometric ornament and ornament recognizably delineative, we find in
each group of advanced textile products a series of forms of mixed or
uncertain pedigree. These must receive slight attention here.

[Illustration: FIG. 325. Coiled basket ornamented with devices
probably very highly conventionalized mythological subjects. Obtained
from the Apache--1/8.]

Fig. 325 represents a large and handsome basket obtained from the
Apache. It will be seen that