THE WITNESS OF PHILOLOGY. 34! 



me an apple ") ; resemblance of sentences to the polysyn- 

 thetic or unanalyzing type (as " I-Tom-struck-a-stick " = 

 " Tom struck me with a stick ") ; the device whereby syntax, 

 or order of apposition, is made to distinguish between pre- 

 dicative, attributive, and possessive meanings, and therefore 

 also between substantives and adjectives ; the importance of 

 grimace in association with gesture (as when a look of inquiry 

 converts an assertion into a question) ; the highly instructive 

 means whereby relational words, and especially pronouns, are 

 rendered in the gestures of pointing ; the no less instructive 

 manner whereby a general idea is rendered in a summation 

 of particular ideas (as " Did you have soup ? did you have 

 porridge ? " &c. = " What did }'ou have for dinner ? ") ; and the 

 receptual or sensuous source of all gesture-signs which are 

 concerned in expressing ideas presenting any degree of 

 abstraction (as striking the hand to signify " hard," &c.). 



Hence, we may everywhere trace a fundamental similarity 

 between the comparatively undeveloped form of conceptual 

 thought as displayed in gesture, and that which philology has 

 revealed as distinctive of early speech. Of course in both 

 cases conceptual thought is there : the ideation is human, 

 though, comparatively speaking, immature. But the impor- 

 tant point to notice is the curiously close similarity between 

 the forms of language-structure as revealed in gesture and in 

 early speech. For no one, I should suppose, can avoid 

 perceiving the idiographic character of gesture-language, 

 whereby it is more nearly allied to the purely receptual 

 modes of communication which we have studied in the 

 lower animals, than is the case with our fully evolved forms 

 of predication. It therefore seems to me highly suggestive 

 that the earliest forms and records of spoken language that 

 we possess (notwithstanding that they arc still far from 

 aboriginal), follow so closely the model which is still sup[)licd 

 to us in the idiographic gestures of deaf-mutes. Such syntax 

 as there is — i.e. such a putting in order as is expressive of the 

 mode of ideational grouping — so nearly resembles the syntax 

 of gesture-language, that wc can at once perceive their 



