132 UNIVERSAL LANGUAGES. 



JANUARY 26, 1892 -FIFTH REGULAR MEETING. 



Present, Chairman Burgess, and Members Van Gieson, 

 Cooley, Elsworth, Neumann, Sutcliffe, Albro, Elting, C. 

 N. Arnold, and a large number of visitors. 



Dr. Tlieo. Neumann presented the following paper, 

 entitled : 



UNIVERSAL LANGUAGES. 



The more commerce and international relations have 

 increased on earth, the greater has become the necessity 

 for all nations to find a means of mutual understanding 

 by virtue of a common language. 



A few words about the origin of language will perhaps 

 not be out of place. Is language anything new, belong- 

 ing to man alone during our cosmic development, or are 

 we allowed to speak of the language of animals? 

 Savage tribes consider the existence of such animal 

 language as evident, and numberless fairy tales give us 

 account of magic means through w^hich man may be en- 

 abled to understand the language of animals, as Melam- 

 pus, the Greek, who is said to have spoken the tongue of 

 the wood-beetles, or the Nordic Sigurd, who could 

 understand the talk of the birds. 



A difference must be made, however, between "lan- 

 guage" and "ability to communicate." The latter is 

 surely developed more or less in nearly all animals 

 which live sociably, and we may then distinguish three 

 forms, the language of sign, or gestures, communicated 

 through the sense of sight, the language of sound, 

 affecting the sense of hearing, and finally the language 

 of touch, which can be used only in immediate contact, 

 as ants are said to have worked it out to a very high 

 degree of perfection. 



Man himself makes use of the latter, the language of 

 touch, in a few cases, for instance in shaking hands, 



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