142 THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN REASON. 



speaking capacity could by itself have initiated the 

 bodily movements of gesture-language. 



We may further observe that no nervous develop- 

 ments of either kind (those subserving oral, and those 

 subserving manual expression) could have constituted 

 a faculty of conception generally, since such things are 

 but differences in degree in the material accompani- 

 ments of a corresponding physiological activity ; while 

 the first introduction of a power of conception is the 

 initiation of a psychical difference of kind. Mr. Romanes 

 is not always careful enough about such distinctions, 

 since, in the passage last quoted, he speaks of a "psycho- 

 logical structure" of "brain" being inherited, instead 

 of speaking of an anatomical condition accompany- 

 ing a certain psychological activity. Some definite 

 structural conditions and physiological activities must 

 — in a creature at once corporeal and intellectual as we 

 are — accompany all thinking. Nevertheless, the phe- 

 "fibmena exhibited by deaf-mutes and gesticulating 

 Indians, serve abundantly to prove that neither the 

 anatomical nor the physiological conditions need be such 

 as are indispensable for speech. They show that such 

 highly abstract ideas as " ripeness," " appearance," " de- 

 tection," " direction," " surprise," etc., can be both enter- 

 tained and plainly signified in the absence of such 

 anatomical and physiological conditions. 



Mr. Romanes next calls our attention * to some 



details concerning the syntax of gesture-language. 



Thus the construction f of the sentences of deaf-mutes 



is said to be uniform " in different countries, and wholly 



* p. IJ4. t See also "On Truth," p. 229. 



