38 EXPRESSION. 
better determined usually by sight. By the blind, 
forms and movements are appreciated through touch, 
which by others are more quickly perceived through 
the medium of vision ; and in the case of the deaf, 
visible signs may be made to serve a purpose better 
fulfilled by words when words can be heard ; but it 
remains true that expression is a mechanism of 
forms, appreciable movements, and sounds, and 
that these are most generally conveyed through 
the portals of eye and ear. 
Thus the problem of expression as I have defined 
it involves the whole study of the origin of lan- 
guage, and the same gulf has to be bridged over in 
determining how meanings have become attached 
to words as in determining how they are attached 
to arrangements of feature and gesture. But the 
origin of the primitive symbols in speech is so 
obscure, and the interaction of circumstances so 
complex in the elevation of them into languages, 
and in determining the differences and changes of 
these, that one can hardly expect as yet any further 
light to be thrown by philology on expression by 
feature and gesture than that which is afforded by 
the mere recognition of the fact that language is a 
symbolic mechanism, to be grouped along with 
everything else to which the term expression can 
be applied. 
