THE PRINCIPLE OF OPPOSITION. 63 



all the fingers of both hands, pointing with the left hand to a wall, then to 

 a corner in the wall shown by the index of the right. 



12. Place, manner of using, or mode of arrangement. The pantomime of 

 putting on shoes or stockings by whites or moccasins by Indians indicates 

 those articles. 



13. Negation of the reverse of what it is desired to describe. Examples: 

 "Fool — no, "given above, would be "wise." "Grood — no," would be "bad." 

 This mode of expression is very frequent, and has led observers to report 

 the absence of positive signs for the ideas negatived, with sometimes as lit- 

 tle propriety as if when an ordinary speaker chose to use the negative form 



. "not good," it should be inferred that he was ignorant of the word " bad." 



14. Attenuation or diminution, of an object stronger or greater than that 

 which it is desired to represent, and the converse. Dampwould be"wet — little''; 

 cool, "cold — little"; hot, " warm— much." In this connection it may be 

 noted that the degree of motion sometimes indicates a different shade of 

 meaning, of which the graduation of the signs for "bad" and "contempt" 

 (Matthews) is an instance, but is more frequently used for emphasis, as is 

 the raising of the voice in speech or italicizing and capitalizing in print. 

 The meaning of the same motion is often modified, individualized, or accen- 

 tuated by associated facial changes and postures of the body not essential 

 to the sign, which emotional changes and postures are at once the most 

 difficult to describe and the most interesting when intelligently reported, 

 not only because they infuse life into the skeleton sign, but because they 

 may belong to the class of innate expressions. Facial variations are not 

 confined to use in distinguishing synonyms, but amazing successes have 

 been recorded in which long narratives have been communicated between 

 deaf-mutes wholly by play of the features, the hands and arms being tied 

 for the experiment. 



There remains to be mentioned as worthy of attention the principle of 

 opposition, as between the right and left hands, and between the thumb and 

 forefinger and the little finger, which appears among Indians in some 

 expressions for "above," "below," "forward," "back," but is not so com- 

 mon as among the methodical, distinguished from the natural, signs of deaf- 

 mutes. This principle is illustrated by the following remarks of Col. Dodge, 



