38 EXPRESSION. 



i 



better determined usually by sight. By the blind, 

 forms and movements are appreciated through touch, 

 which by others are more quickly perceived through 

 the medium of vision ; and in the case of the deaf, 

 visible signs may be made to serve a purpose better 

 fulfilled by words when words can be heard ; but it 

 remains true that expression is a mechanism of 

 forms, appreciable movements, and sounds, and 

 that these are most generally conveyed through 

 the portals of eye and ear. 



Thus the problem of expression as I have defined 

 it involves the whole study of the origin of lan- 

 guage, and the same gulf has to be bridged over in 

 determining how meanings have become attached 

 to words as in determining how they are attached 

 to arrangements of feature and gesture. But the 

 origin of the primitive symbols in speech is so 

 obscure, and the interaction of circumstances so 

 complex in the elevation of them into languages, 

 and in determining the differences and changes of 

 these, that one can hardly expect as yet any further 

 light to be thrown by philology on expression by 

 feature and gesture than that which is afforded by 

 the mere recognition of the fact that language is a 

 symbolic mechanism, to be grouped along with 

 everything else to which the term expression can 

 be applied. 



