288 LANGUAGE IN LOWER MAN. 



is common to other animals, and equally useful to them 

 and to man. Laughter and weeping, the shout of joy, the 

 cry of alarm, the groan of pain, or the other sounds, the 

 looks, attitudes, gestures, or other signs whereby both man 

 and animals express their feelings of body or mind con- 

 stitute a common or natural language, understood as a rule 

 by all races, genera, and species. 



The mental phenomena of deaf-mutism in the most highly 

 civilised communities, in relation to man's modes of ex- 

 pressing his feelings and ideas, are most instructive. The 

 congenitally deaf and dumb, in whom the dumbness is the 

 natural result of the deafness, are ' ignorant of all ordinary 

 written and spoken language ; ' but, nevertheless, they are 

 quite capable of education to a high degree. 



This instruction of the deaf-mute is conducted partly 

 by gestures and signs, whereby is imparted a knowledge of 

 things. In a church for deaf-mutes in New York, we are 

 told, ' one service every Sunday is conducted in the language 

 of signs.' Sounds, therefore, are not necessary to the com- 

 munication of ideas ; a circumstance that is shown, more- 

 over, by the fact that * it is a common thing for a man to 

 teach himself to read a language though he cannot pro- 

 nounce it ' (' Chambers's Encyclopaedia '). 



Again, the expressiveness of attitude in man, in relation 

 both to ideas and emotions, is well illustrated by the phe- 

 nomena of braidism or hypnotism (Carpenter) of what is 

 commonly but erroneously described as animal magnetism, 

 electro-biology, or mesmerism. 



