62 THE PRINCIPLE OF ANTITHESIS. Chap. II. 



how few unequivocal instances can be adduced. This 

 depends partly on all the signs having commonly had 

 some natural origin; and partly on the practice of the 

 deaf and dumb and of savages to contract their signs 

 as much as possible for the sake of rapidity. 3 Hence 

 their natural source or origin often becomes doubtful or 

 is completely lost; as is likewise the case with articulate 

 language. 



Many signs, moreover, which plainly stand in oppo- 

 sition to each other, appear to have had on both sides 

 a significant origin. This seems to hold good with 

 the signs used by the deaf and dumb for light and dark- 

 ness, for strength and weakness, &c. In a future chap- 

 ter I shall endeavour to show that the opposite gestures 

 of affirmation and negation, namely, vertically nodding 

 and laterally shaking the head, have both probably had 

 a natural beginning. The waving of the hand from 

 right to left, which is used as a negative by some savages, 

 may have been invented in imitation of shaking the 

 head; but whether the opposite movement of waving 

 the hand in a straight line from the face, which is used 

 in affirmation, has arisen through antithesis or in some 

 quite distinct manner, is doubtful. 



If we now turn to the gestures which are innate 

 or common to all the individuals of the same species, and 

 which come under the present head of antithesis, it is 

 extremely doubtful, whether any of them were at first 

 deliberately invented and consciously performed. With 

 mankind the best instance of a gesture standing in direct 



3 See on this subject Dr. W. E. Scott's interesting- work, 

 ' The Deaf and Dumb,' 2nd edit. 1870, p. 12. He says, " This 

 contracting- of natural gestures into much shorter g-estures 

 than the natural expression requires, is very common 

 among-st the deaf and dumb. This contracted gesture 

 is frequently so shortened as nearly to lose all semblance 

 of the natural one, but to the (leaf and dumb who use it, 

 it still has the force of the original expression." 



