GENERAL MEETING. ‘69 
]’Epee (then under the charge of his successor, the Abbe Sicard) 
was imported from France, and became the medium of instruction. 
The teachers trained in this school naturally became the principals 
of other institutions established upon its model, and thus the sign- 
language has been diffused over the length and breadth of our Jand. 
I heartily agree with all that experienced teachers of the deaf 
have urged concerning the beauty and great interest of this gesture 
language. It is indeed interesting to observe how pantomimic ges- 
tures have been abbreviated to simple signs expressive of concrete 
ideas; how these have been compounded or have changed their 
meaning to indicate abstract thoughts; and how the sequence of 
the sign-words has to a certain extent become obligatory, thus 
forming a sort of gesture syntax or grammar. 
The original stock or stocks from which our languages are derived 
must have disappeared from earth ages before historic times; but 
in the gesture speech of the deaf we have a language whose history 
can be traced ab origine, and it has appeared to me that this fact 
should give it a unique and independent value. In the year 1878, 
in a paper read before the Anthropological Society of London, I 
advocated the study of the gesture language by men of science ; 
for it seemed to me that the study of the mode in which the sign 
language has arisen from pantomime might throw a flood of light 
upon the origin and mode of growth of all languages. 
You may ask why it is that, with my high appreciation of this 
language as a language, I should advocate its entire abolition in 
our institutions for the deaf. 
IT admit all that has been urged by experienced teachers con- 
cerning the ease with which a deaf child acquires this language, 
and its perfect adaptability for the purpose of developing his mind ; 
but after all it is not the language of the millions of people among 
whom his lot in life is cast. It is to them a foreign tongue, and 
the more he becomes habituated to its use the more he becomes a 
stranger in his own country. 
This is not denied by teachers of the deaf and dumb, but the 
argument is made, as I have stated above, that it is the only lan- 
guage that is natural to congenitally deaf children, or that at all 
events, some form of gesture language must necessarily be their 
vernacular, and be employed to teach our English tongue. 
