342 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



common ps}'chological source. It is on account of this 

 structural resemblance between gesture and early speech that 

 I have devoted so much space to our consideration of the 

 former ; and if I do not now dwell at greater length upon the 

 significance of the analogy, it is only because this significance 

 appears too obvious to require further treatment. 



There is, however, one point with reference to this 

 analogy on which a few words must here be said. If there is 

 any truth at all in the theory of evolution with reference to 

 the human mind, we may be quite sure, from what has been 

 said in earlier chapters, that tone, gesture, and grimace 

 preceded articulation as the medium of pre-conceptual 

 utterance. Therefore, the structural similarity between exist- 

 ing gesture-language and the earliest records of articulate 

 language now under consideration, is presumably due, not 

 only to a similarity of psychological conditions, but also to 

 direct continuity of descent. Or, as Colonel Mallery well 

 puts it, while speaking of the presumable origin of spoken 

 language, "as the action was then the essential, and the 

 consequent or concomitant sound the accident, it would be 

 expected that a representation, or feigned reproduction of the 

 action, would have been used to express the idea before 

 the sound associated with that action could have been 

 separated from it. The visual onomatopoeia of gestures, 

 which even yet have been subjected to but slight artificial 

 corruption, would therefore serve as a key to the audible. It 

 is also contended that in the pristine days, when the sounds 

 of the only words yet formed had close connection with 

 objects and the ideas directly derived from them, signs were 

 as much more copious for communication than speech as the 

 sight embraces more and more distinct characteristics of 

 objects than does the sense of hearing."* 



All the foregoing and general conclusions thus reached, 



* Sign- Language, &'f., p. 284. On page 352, this writer further supplies a most 

 interesting comparison between gesture and spoken language as both are used by the 

 North American Indians — showing that the syntax in the two cases is identical. 



