TONE AND GESTURE, IO5 



in the Instruction of idiotic children, "those to whom there is 

 no hope of teaching more than the merest rudiments of speech, 

 are yet capable of receiving a considerable amount of know- 

 ledge by means of signs, and of expressing themselves by 

 them." * Lastly, among savages, it is notorious that tone, 

 gesticulation, and grimace play a much larger part in con- 

 versation than they do among ourselves. Indeed, we have 

 some, though not undisputed, evidence to show that in the 

 case of many savages gesticulation is so far a necessary aid 

 to articulation, that the latter without the former is but very 

 imperfectly intelligible. For example, " those who, like the 

 Arapahos, possess a very scanty vocabulary, pronounced in a 

 quasi-intelligible way, can hardly converse with one another 

 in the dark." f And, as Mr. Tylor says, "the array of 

 evidence in favour of the existence of tribes whose language 

 is incomplete without the help of gesture-signs, even for 

 things of ordinary import, is very remarkable." % A fact 

 which, as he very properly adds, "constitutes a telling 

 argument in favour of the theory that the gesture-language 

 is the original utterance of mankind [as it is ontogenetically 

 in the individual man], out of which speech has developed 

 itself more or less fully among different tribes." | 



In support of the same general conclusions I may here 

 also quote the following excellent remarks from Colonel 

 Mallery's laborious work on Gesture-language : — § 



" The wishes and emotions of very young children are 

 conveyed in a small number of sounds, but in a great variety 

 of gestures and facial expressions. A child's gestures are in- 

 telligent long in advance of speech ; although very early and 

 persistent attempts are made to give it instruction in the 

 latter but none in the former, from the time when it begins 

 risu cognoscere vtatrem. It learns words only as they are 



♦ Quoted by Tylor, Early History of Mankind ^ p. 8a 

 t Burton, City of the Saints^ p. 151. 

 \ Loc, cit.y p. 78. 



§ Sign- language among the North American Indians^ &^r.,by Lieut. -Col. Garrick 

 Mallery ^First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology ^ Washington, 18S1). 



