PRACTICAL VALUE OF SIGN-LANGUAGE. 3 



many-tongued subjects. This advantage is not merely theoretical, but has 

 been demonstrated to be practical by a professor in a deaf-mute college 

 who, lately visiting several of the wild tribes of the plains, made himself 

 understood among all of them without knowing a word of any of their 

 languages ; nor would it only obtain in connection with American tribes, 

 being applicable to intercourse with savages in Africa and Asia, though it 

 is not pretended to fulfill by this agency the schoolmen's dream of an oecu- 

 menical mode of communication between all peoples in spite of their dia- 

 lectic divisions. 



Sign-language, being the mother utterance of nature, poetically styled 

 by Lamartine the visible attitudes of the soul, is superior to all others in 

 that it permits every one to find in nature an image to express his thoughts 

 on the most needful matters intelligently to any other person, though it 

 must ever henceforth be inferior in the power of formulating thoughts now 

 attained by words, notwithstanding the boast of Roscius that he could 

 convey more varieties of sentiment by gesture alone than Cicero could in 

 oratory. 



It is true that gestures excel in graphic and dramatic effect applied to 

 narrative and to rhetorical exhibition; but speech, when highly cultivated, 

 is better adapted to generalization and abstraction ; therefore to logic and 

 metaphysics. Some of the enthusiasts in signs have, however, contended 

 that this unfavorable distinction is not from any inherent incapability, 

 but because their employment has not been continued unto perfection, and 

 that if they had been elaborated by the secular labor devoted to spoken 

 language they might in resources and distinctness have exceeded many 

 forms of the latter. GtALLaudet, Peet, and others may be right in assert- 

 ing that man could by his arms, hands, and fingers, with facial and bodily 

 accentuation, express any idea that could be conveyed by words. The pro- 

 cess regarding abstract ideas is only a variant from that of oral speech, in 

 which the words for the most abstract ideas, such as law, virtue, infinitude, 

 and immortality, are shown by Max Muller to have been derived and 

 deduced, that is, abstracted from sensuous impressions. In the use of 

 signs the countenance and manner as well as the tenor decide whether 

 objects themselves are intended, or the forms, positions, qualities, and 

 motions of other objects which are suggested, and signs for moral and 



