RELATION OF TO. YE AND GESTURE TO WORDS. 15I 



his fingers had taught him his numbers, and that when the 

 number was over ten, he made notches on a piece of wood. 

 Here we see the inherited capability of numerical computation 

 united with the crudest form of numerical notation, or sym- 

 bolism. And so in all other cases of deaf-mutes before 

 instruction ; they present an inherited capacity of abstract 

 ideation, and yet do not find their sign-language of much 

 service in assisting them to develop this capacity: it is too 

 essentially pictorial to go far beyond the region of sensuous 

 perception. 



Thus, on the whole, although I deem it profitless to 

 speculate on what the language of gestures might have 

 become in the absence of speech, I think it is highly question- 

 able whether it would have reached any considerable level of 

 excellence ; and I think it is not improbable that, in the 

 absence of articulation, the human race would not have made 

 much psychological advance upon the anthropoid apes. For 

 we must never forget the important fact that thought is quite 

 as much the effect as it is the cause of language, whether of 

 speech or of gesture ; and seeing how inferior gesture is to 

 speech as a system of language, especially in regard to pre- 

 cision and abstraction, I do not think it probable that, in the 

 absence of speech, gesture alone would have supplied the 

 exact and delicate conditions which are essential to the 

 growth of any highly elaborate ideation. 



The next point which I desire to consider is that, although 

 gesture language is not in my opinion so efficient a means of 

 developing abstract ideation as is spoken language, it must 

 nevertheless have been of much service in assisting the 

 growth of the latter, and so must have been of much service 

 in laying the foundation of the whole mental fabric which has 

 been constructed by the faculty of speech. Whether we look 

 to young children, to savages, or in a lesser degree to idiots, 

 we find that gesture plays an important part in assisting 

 speech ; and in all cases where a vocabulary is scanty or 

 imperfect, gesture is sure to be employed as the natural 

 means of supi)lementing speech. Therefore, supposing 



