280 SIGN LANGUAGE AMONG NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
to both speaker and hearer undoubtedly tends to a phlegmatic delivery 
and disdain of subsidiary aid. An excited speaker will, however, gen- 
erally make a free use of his hands without regard to any effect of that use 
upon auditors. Even among the gesture-hating English, when they are 
aroused from torpidity of manner, the hands are involuntarily clapped 
in approbation, rubbed with delight, wrung in distress, raised in aston- 
ishment, and wayed in triumph. The fingers are snapped for contempt, 
the forefinger is vibrated to reprove or threaten, and the fist shaken in 
defiance. The brow is contracted with displeasure, and the eyes winked 
to show connivance. The shoulders are shrugged to express disbelief 
or repugnance, the eyebrows elevated with surprise, the lips bitten in 
vexation and thrust out in sullenness or displeasure, while a higher de- 
gree of anger is shown by a stamp of the foot. Quintilian, regarding 
the subject, however, not as involuntary exhibition of feeling and intel- 
lect, but for illustration and enforcement, becomes eloquent on the va- 
riety of motions of which the hands alone are capable, as follows: 
“The action of the other parts of the body assists the speaker, but 
the hands (I could almost say) speak themselves. By them do we not 
demand, promise, call, dismiss, threaten, supplicate, express abhorrence 
and terror, question and deny? Do we not by them express joy and 
sorrow, doubt, confession, repentance, measure, quantity, number, and 
time? Do they not also encourage, supplicate, restrain, convict, ad- 
mire, respect? and in pointing out places and persons do they not dis- 
charge the office of adverbs and of pronouns?” 
Voss adopts almost the words of Quintilian, ‘Manus non modo lo- 
quentem adjuvant, sed ipsee pene loqui videntur,” while Cresollius calls the 
hand “the minister of reason and wisdom * * * without it there is 
no eloquence.” 
INVOLUNTARY RESPONSE TO GESTURES. : 
Further evidence of the unconscious survival of gesture language is 
atforded by the ready and involuntary response made in signs to signs 
when a man with the speech and habits of civilization is brought into 
close contact with Indians or deaf-mutes. Without having ever before 
seen or made one of their signs, he will soon not only catch the meaning 
of theirs, but produce his own, which they will likewise comprehend, 
the power seemingly remaining latent in him until called forth by 
necessity. 
NATURAL PANTOMIME. 
In the earliest part of man’s history the subjects of his discourse must 
have been almost wholly sensuous, and therefore readily expressed in pan- 
tomime. Not only was pantomime sufficient for all the actual needs of 
his existence, but it is not easy to imagine how he could have used Jan- 
guage such as is now known to us. If the best English dictionary and 
grammar had been miraculously furnished to him, together with the art 
of reading with proper pronunciation, the gift would have been value- 
less, because the ideas expressed by the words had not yet been formed. 
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