CAUSES OF THE ERRONEOUS REPORT. 15 



viated the diversity is vastly increased. The original conception, being 

 independent, has necessarily also varied, because all objects have several 

 characteristics, and what struck one set of people as the most distinctive 

 of these would not always so impress another. From these reasons we 

 cannot expect, without trouble, to understand the etymology of all the 

 signs, being less rich in ancillary material than were even the old philolo- 

 gists, who guessed at Latin and Greek derivations before they were assisted 

 . by Sanscrit and other Aryan roots. 



It is not difficult to conjecture some of the causes of the report under 

 consideration. Explorers and officials are naturally brought into contact 

 more closely with those persons of the tribes visited who are experts in the 

 sign-language than with their other members, and those experts are selected, 

 on account of their skill as interpreters, as guides to accompany the visit- 

 ors. The latter also seek occasion to be present when the signs are used, 

 whether with or without words, in intertribal councils, and then the same 

 class of experts are the orators, for this long exercise in gesture-speech has 

 made the Indian politicians, with no special effort, masters of the art only 

 acquired by our public speakers after laborious apprenticeship before their 

 mirrors. The whole theory and practice of sign-language being that all 

 who understand its principles can make themselves mutually intelligible, 

 the fact of the ready comprehension and response among all the skilled 

 gesturers giyes the impression of a common code. Furthermore, if the 

 explorer learns to use any of the signs used by any of the tribes, he will 

 probably be understood in any other by the same class of persons who will 

 surround him in the latter, thereby confirming him in the "universal" 

 theory. Those of the tribe who are less skilled, but who are not noticed, 

 might be unable to catch the meaning of signs which have not been actu- 

 ally taught to them, just as ignorant persons among us cannot derive any 

 sense from newly-coined words or those strange to their habitual vocabu- 

 lary, which linguistic scholars would instantly understand, though never 

 before heard, and might afterward adopt. 



In order to sustain the position taken as to the existence of a general 

 system instead of a uniform code, admitting the generic unity while deny- 

 ing the specific identity, and to show that this is not a distinction without 



