THE GESTURE-LANGUAGE. 31 



he may say that he is going home " a week forward." That 

 he would of himself make the abstract past or future, as the 

 Abbe Sicard has it, by throwing the hand back or forward, with- 

 out specifying any particular period, I am not prepared to 

 say. The difficulty may be avoided by signing " my brother 

 sick done" for " My brother has been sick," as to imply that 

 the sickness is a thing finished and done with. Or the ex- 

 pression of face and gesture may often tell what is meant. 

 The expression with which the sign for eating dinner is made 

 will tell whether the speaker has had his dinner or is going 

 to it. When anything pleasant or painful is mentioned by 

 signs, the look will commonly convey the distinction between 

 remembrance of what is past, and anticipation of what is to 

 come. 



Though the deaf and dumb has, much as we have, an idea of 

 the connection of cause and effect, he has not, I think, any di- 

 rect means of distinguishing causation from mere sequence or 

 simultaneity, except a way of showing by his manner that two 

 events belong to one another, which can hardly be described in 

 words, though if he sees further explanation necessary, he has 

 no difiiculty in giving it. Thus he would express the statement 

 that a man died of di'inking, by saying that he " died, drank, 

 drank, drank." If the inquiry were made, '' died, did he ?" he 

 could put the causation beyond doubt by answering, " yes, he 

 drank, and drank, and drank !" If he wished to say that the 

 gardener had poisoned himself, the order of his signs would be, 

 "gardener dead, medicine bad drank." 



To "make" is too abstract an idea for the deaf-mute; to 

 show that the tailor makes the coat, or that the carpenter 

 makes the table, he would represent the tailor sewing the coat, 

 and the carpenter sawing and planing the table. Such a pro- 

 position as " Rain makes the land fruitful" would not come into 

 his way of thinking ; " rain fall, plants grow," would be his 

 pictorial expression.^ 



As an example of the structure of the gesture-language, I 

 give the words roughly corresponding to the signs by which 

 the Lord's Prayer is acted every morning at the Edinburgh In- 

 1 Steintbal, Spr. der. T.. p. 923. 



