160 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 



i 



to seek for the exciting cause of the earliest forms of 



speech. 



The simplest Language open to Man was that which 

 we have already seen to mark the beginning of all 

 Language, the Language of gesture or sign. To the 

 word gesture, however, it is necessary to attach a 

 larger meaning than the term ordinarily expresses to 

 us. It is not to be limited, for example, to visible 

 movements of the limbs or facial muscles. The ejac- 

 ulations of the savage, the drumming of the gorilla, 

 the screech of the parrot, the crying, growling, purring, 

 hissing, and spitting of other animals are all forms of 

 gesture. Nor is it possible to separate the Language 

 of gesture from the Language of intonation. These 

 have grown up side by side and can neither be dis- 

 tinguished psychologically nor as to priority in the 

 order of Evolution. Intonation, though it has grown 

 to be infinitely the more delicate instrument of the two 

 and is still so important a part of some Languages 

 the Chinese, for example as to be an integral part of 

 them, has its roots in the same soil and must be looked 

 upon as, along with it, the earliest form of Language. 



That this Gesture-Language marked, if not the dawn, 

 at least a very early stage of Language in the case of 

 Man, there is abundant evidence. Apart from analogy, 

 there are at least three witnesses who may be cited in 

 proof not only of the fact, but of the high perfection to 

 which a Gesture-Language may be carried. The first 

 of these witnesses is the homo alalus, the not-speaking 

 man, of to-day, the deaf mute. As an actual case of a 

 human being reduced as regards the power of speech to 

 the level of early Man his evidence, even with all allow- 

 ances for the high development of his mental faculties, 



