REASON AND DIVERS TONGUES. 245 



gesture-signs," or " that predication is but the adult 

 form " of the sign-making of many a speechless child. 



It is also quite true, as Mr. Romanes quotes * Prof. 

 Max Miiller as saying, that "F«, weave, whether as a 

 reminder or as a command, would have as much right to 

 be called a sentence as when we say ' Work,' Le.^ ' Let 

 us work.' ... A mastef requiring his slaves to labour, 

 and promising them their food in the evening, would 

 have no more to say than * Dig — Feed,' and this would 

 be quite as intelligible as ' Dig, and you shall have 

 food,' or, as we now say, * If you dig, you shall have 

 food.' " 



It may also be quite true, as the Professor is further 

 quoted f as saying, that " if we watch the language of a 

 child, which is really Chinese spoken in English, we see 

 that there is a form of thought, and of language, per- 

 fectly rational and intelligible to those who have studied 

 it, in which, nevertheless, the distinction between noun 

 and verb, nay, between subject and predicate, is not yet 

 realized." 



Mr. Romanes tells us | (and we have no objection) 

 "that one of the earliest parts of speech to become 

 differentiated " were pronouns " originally indistinguish- 

 able from " adverbs, and " concerned with denoting 

 relations of place. . . . 'Hie, iste, ilk, are notoriously a 

 sort of correlatives to ego, tu, sui. . . .' There is very 

 good reason to conclude that these . . . were in the 

 first instance . . . articulate translations of gesture- 

 signs—/.^., of a pointing to place-relations. / being 

 equivalent to this one, he or she or it to that one, etc." 

 * p. 299. t p. 300. X Ibid. 



