1898-99. | LANGUAGE AND RELIGION. 277 
ances accompanying gestures, finally became the signs of the gestures, 
Gesture-language is used extensively at the present time by the Canadian 
Indians and numerous tribes throughout the world. The excellent 
monograph on this subject by Garrick Mallory has revealed its signifi- 
cance and universal use. Its present use by our native tribes reveals the 
fact that gesture-language will reach farther than spoken language. 
Having occasion to speak to a white man on the Blood Indian Reserve, 
I found that the distance between us was so great that I could not make 
him hear, though shouting loudly, and to add to the difficulty he was 
travelling from me ata rapid pace. There was an Indian standing close 
to me, and another beyond my friend, and coming toward him. My red 
companion with a few gestures secured the attention of the other Indian, 
and the two natives carried on a conversation in the sign-language, with 
the result that when the Indian met the white man and he delivered to 
him his message, my white friend returned to the place where I 
stood waiting for him. Sound-speech preceded gesture-speech and 
the latter remained as an aid to fuller and more emphatic expression. 
We can never know what the first sound-signs were like, but their 
choice and currency would depend on the success with which they 
conveyed the meaning intended. Some of these gestures may have 
served as effective germs of speech, but would finally give place to 
the highest form of speech, language in the form of symbols and 
abstract terms. 
The distinctive human faculty is the power of speech and thought. 
Man is distinguished from the lower animals by the faculty of thinking 
by symbols. Every kind of animal possesses some sort of language 
which is expressive of animal sensations, and sense-impressions and rea- 
sonings. Possessing different sorts of minds, they are able to express 
their needs and feelings to their kind by vocal intonations, gestures, touch 
and perhaps smell. The study of the speech of monkeys has revealed 
the fact that they have three or four inflections of the same sound, each 
with a meaning of its own. They are able to speak in syllables, the 
word for food having five or six syllables. There is however a wide gulf 
between animal and human intelligence and language. Animals have 
not the human larynx, and the power of human thought ; man can learn 
the language of some animals, and imitate others, but animals are unable 
to learn the speech of men. 
There must have been something in man which caused him first to 
use his mouth to give expression to the thought of his heart. To say 
that this was natural in the sense that speech was of human origin, is to 
