I40 THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN REASON 



narrative of a boy going to an apple-tree, hunting for 

 ripe fruit, and filling his pockets, being surprised by the 

 owner and hit upon the head with a stone." This anec- 

 dote was much appreciated by the Indians and com- 

 pletely understood. 



The amount of abstract thought thus expressed and 

 apprehended by means of gesture only, shows that it 

 must be a matter of difficulty to lay down any hard 

 and fast line beyond which intellectual intercourse by 

 gesture only should be absolutely impossible. 



As to the effect of spoken language on gesture, 

 Mr. Romanes observes:* "As all the existing races of 

 mankind are a word-speaking race, we are not able 

 to eliminate this factor, and to say how far the sign- 

 making faculty, as exhibited in the gesture-language 

 of man, is indebted to the elaborating influence pro- 

 duced by the constant and parallel employment of 

 spoken language. We can scarcely, however, entertain 

 any doubt that the reflex influence of speech upon 

 gesture must have been considerable, if not immense." 

 This seems to us to be very questionable ; for the use 

 of so rapid and very serviceable an agent as spoken 

 language, must have tended to starve out and replace 

 the relatively slow and much less serviceable language 

 of gesture. No doubt, speech has greatly aided the 

 elaboration of ideas, and so enriched the conceptual 

 material for gesture-expression, without at all facilitating 

 or developing gesture expression itself. We have no evi- 

 dence of its having done the latter, and do not see how 

 it could have had that effect. Mr. Romanes continues : 



* P- 113. 



