mautery.] HISTORY OF GESTURE SPEECH——-MODERN USE. 293 
readers in the American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb, 1875. In that 
valuable serial, conducted by Prof. E. A. Fay, of the National Deaf 
‘ 
Mute College at Washington, and now in its twenty-sixth volume, a 
large amount of the current literature on the subject indicated by its 
title can be found. 
MODERN USE OF GESTURE SPEECH. 
Dr. TYLOR says (Larly History of Mankind, 44): “We cannot lay down 
as a rule that gesticulation decreases as civilization advances, and say, 
for instance, that a Southern Frenchman, because his talk is illustrated 
with gestures as a book with pictures, is less civilized than a German 
or Englishman.” This is true, and yet it is almost impossible for per- 
sons not accustomed to gestures to observe them without associating 
the idea of low culture. Thus in Mr. Darwin’s summing up of those 
characteristics of the natives of Tierra del Fuego, which rendered it 
difficult to believe them to be fellow-creatures, he classes their “ violent 
gestures” with their filthy and greasy skins, discordant voices, and hide- 
ous faces bedaubed with paint. This description is quoted by the Duke 
of Argyle in his Unity of Nature in approval of those characteristics as 
evidence of the lowest condition of humanity. 
Whether or not the power of the visible gesture relative to, and its 
influence upon the words of modern oral speech are in inverse proportion 
to the general culture, it seems established that they do not bear that or 
any constant proportion to the development of the several languages 
with which gesture is still more or less associated. The statement has 
frequently been made that gesture is yet to some highly-advanced lan- 
guages a necessary modifying factor, and that only when a language has 
become so artificial as to be completely expressible in written signs—in- 
deed, has been remodeled through their long familiar use—can the bodily 
signs be wholly dispensed with. The evidence for this statement is now 
doubted, and it is safer to affirm that a common use of gesture depends 
more upon the sociologic conditions of the speakers than upon the degree 
of copiousness of their oral speech. 
