8 ARGUMENTS FOR PRIORITY OF GESTURE. 



enough, used the precise signs made by his neighbors. It is further 

 asserted that semi-idiotic children who cannot be taught more than the 

 merest rudiments of speech can receive a considerable amount of knowledge 

 through signs and express themselves by them, and that sufferers from 

 aphasia continue to use appropriate gestures after their words are uncon- 

 trollable. In cases where men have been long in solitary confinement, 

 been abandoned, or otherwise have become isolated from their fellows, they 

 have lost speech entirely, in which they required to be reinstructed through 

 gestures in the same manner that missionaries, explorers, and shipwrecked 

 mariners became acquainted with tongues before unknown to civilization. 

 These facts are to be considered in connection with the general law of evo- 

 lution, that in cases of degeneration the last and highest acquirements are 

 lost first. 



The fact that the deaf-mute thinks without phonetic expression is a 

 stumbling-block to Max Muller's ingenious theory of primitive speech, to 

 the effect that man had a creative faculty giving to each conception, as it 

 thrilled through his brain for the first time, a special phonetic expression, 

 which faculty became extinct when its necessity ceased. 



In conjecturing the first attempts of man or his hypothetical ancestor 

 at the expression either of percepts or concepts, it is difficult to connect 

 vocal sounds with any large number of objects, but readily conceivable 

 that there should have been resort, next to actual touch (of which all the 

 senses may be modifications) to suggest the characteristics of their forms 

 and movements to the eye — fully exercised before the tongue — so soon as 

 the arms and fingers became free for the requisite simulation or portrayal. 

 There is no distinction between pantomime and sign-language except that 

 the former is the parent of the latter, which is more abbreviated and less 

 obvious. Pantomime acts movements, reproduces forms and positions, pre- 

 sents pictures, and manifests emotions with greater realization than any 

 other mode of utterance. It may readily be supposed that a trogdolyte 

 man would desire to communicate the finding of a cave in the vicinity of a 

 pure pool, circled with soft grass, and shaded by trees bearing edible fruit. 

 No natural sound is connected with any of those objects, but the position 

 and size of the cave, its distance and direction, the water, its quality, and 



