10 MODERN USE OF GESTURES AND SIGNS. 



upon a compact between the speaker and hearer which presupposes the 

 existence of a prior mode of communication. 



For the present purpose there is, however, no need to determine upon 

 the priority between communication of ideas by bodily motion and by vocal 

 articulation. It is enough to admit that the connection between them was 

 so eai'ly and intimate that the gestures, in the wide sense indicated of pre- 

 senting ide,as under physical forms, had a direct formative effect upon many 

 words ; that they exhibit the earliest condition of the human mind ; are 

 traced from the farthest antiquity among all peoples possessing records; 

 are universally prevalent in the savage stage of social evolution ; survive 

 agreeably in the scenic pantomime, and still adhere to the ordinary speech 

 of civilized man hj motions of the face, hands, head, and body, often invol- 

 untary, often purposely in illustration or emphasis. 



MODERN USE OF GESTURES AND SIGNS. 



The power of the visible gesture relative to and its influence upon 

 the words of modern oral speech are perhaps, with the qualification here- 

 after indicated, in inverse proportion to the general culture, but do not 

 bear that or any constant proportion to the development of the several 

 languages with which gestm-e is still more or less associated They are 

 affected more by the sociological conditions of the speakers than by the 

 degree of excellence of their tongue. The statement is frequently made 

 that gesture is yet to some highly-advanced languages a necessary modify- 

 ing factor, and that only when a language has become so artificial as to be 

 completely expressible in written signs — indeed, has been remodeled through 

 their long familiar use — can the bodily signs be wholly dispensed with. The 

 story has been told by travelers in many parts of the world that various 

 languages cannot be clearly understood in the dark by their possessors, 

 using their mother tongue between themselves. The evidence for this any- 

 where is suspicious, and when it is, as it often has been, asserted about 

 some of the tribes of North American Indians, it is absolutely false, and 

 must be attributed to the error of travelers who, ignorant of the dialect, 

 never see the natives except when trying to make themselves intelligible to 

 their visitors by a practice which they have found by experience to have 



