I20 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



as is reported by Dr. Matthews with reference to the sign for 

 bad and contempt. This change in degree of motion is, how- 

 ever, often used for emphasis only, as is the raising of the 

 voice in speech or itahcizing and capitahzing in print. The 

 Prince of Wied gives an instance of a comparison in his sign 

 for excessively hard, first giving that for hard, viz. : Open the 

 left hand, and strike against it several times with the right 

 (with the backs of the fingers). Afterwards he gives hard, 

 excessively, as follows : Sign for hard, then place the left 

 index finger upon the right shoulder, at the same time extend 

 and raise the right arm high, extending the index finger 

 upward, perpendicularly." 



I have entered thus at some length into the syntax of 

 gesture-language because this language is, as I have before 

 remarked, the most natural or immediate mode of giving 

 expression to the logic of recepts ; it is the least symbolic or 

 conventional phase of the sign-making faculty, and therefore 

 a study of its method is of importance in such a general 

 survey of this faculty as we are endeavouring to take. The 

 points in the above analysis to which I would draw attention 

 as the most important are, the absence of the copula and of 

 many other " parts of speech," the order in which ideas are 

 expressed, the pictorial devices by which the ideas are pre- 

 sented in as concrete a form as possible, and the fact that no 

 ideas of any high abstraction are ever expressed at all.* 



* Further information of a kind corroborating what has been given in the 

 foregoing chapter concerning gesture-language may be found in Long's Expedition 

 to the Rocky Mountains, and Kleinpaul's paper in Volkerpsychologie, &=£., vi. 

 352-375. The subject was first dealt with in a philosophical manner by Leibnitz, 

 in 17171 Collectanea Etymologia^ ch. ix. 



