THE EVOL UTION OF LANG UA GE. 1 05 



by tbem. Sufferers from aphasia continue to use 

 appropriate gestures. A stammerer, too, works his 

 arms and features as if determined to get his thoughts 

 out, in a manner not only suggestive of the physical 

 struggle, but of the use of gesture as a hereditary 

 expedient.'' * 



The survival both of gesture and intonation in 

 modern adult speech, and especially the unconscious- 

 ness of their use, illustrate how indelibly these 

 primitive forms of Language are embedded in the 

 human race. There are doubtless exceptions, but it is 

 probably the rule that gestures are mainly called in 

 to supplement expression when the subject-matter of 

 discourse does not belong to the highest ranges of 

 thought, or the speaker to the loftiest type of oratory. 

 The higher levels of thought were reached when the 

 purer forms of spoken Language had become the 

 vehicle of expression ; and, as has often been noticed, 

 when a speaker soars into a very lofty region, or 

 allows his mind to grapple intensely and absorbingly 

 with an exalted theme, he becomes more and more 

 motionless, and only resumes the gesture-language 

 when he descends to commoner levels. It is not only 

 that a fine speaker has a greater command of words 

 and is able to dispense with auxiliaries — as a master 

 of style can dispense with the use of italics — but that, 

 at all events, in the case of abstract thought, it is 

 untranslatable into gesture-speech. Gestures are sug- 

 gestions and reminders of things seen and heard. 

 They are nearly all attached to objects or to moods, 

 and rival words only when used of every-day things. 



1 First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washing- 

 ton, 1881. 



