THE GESTURE-LANGUAGE. 19 



drawn from the nature of the objects they are to represent. It 

 is only the signs given by the mute himself to express the 

 actions which he witnesses, and the objects which are brought 

 before him, which can replace articulate language." Speaking 

 of his celebrated deaf-and-dumb pupil, Massieu, he says : — 

 " Thus, by a happy exchange, as I taught him the written 

 signs of our language, Massieu taught me the mimic signs of 

 his." " So it must be said that it is neither I nor my admi- 

 rable master (the Abbe de TEpee) who are the inventors of the 

 deaf-and-dumb language. And as a foreigner is not fit to 

 teach a Frenchman French, so the speaking man has no busi- 

 ness to meddle with the invention of signs, giving them abstract 

 values."^ All these are modern statements ; but long before 

 the days of Deaf and Dumb Institutions, Eabelais^ sharp eye 

 had noticed how natural and appropriate were the untaught 

 signs made by born deaf-mutes. When Panurge is going to try 

 by divination from signs what his fortune will be in married 

 hfe, Pantagruel thus counsels him: — "Pourtant, vous fault 

 choisir ung mut sourd de nature, affin que ses gestes vous 

 soyent naifuement propheticques, non fainctz, fardez, ne 

 aflfectez." 



Nor are we obliged to depend upon the observations of ordi- 

 nary speaking men for our knowledge of the way in which the 

 gesture-language developes itself in the mind of the deaf-and- 

 dumb. The educated deaf-mutes can tell us from their own 

 experience how gesture-signs originate. The following account 

 is given by Kruse, a deaf-mute himself, and a well-known 

 teacher of deaf-mutes, and author of several works of no small 

 ability : — " Thus the deaf-and-dumb must have a language, 

 without which no thought can be brought to pass. But here 

 nature soon comes to his help. What strikes him most, or 

 what . . . makes a distinction to him between one thing and 

 another, such distinctive signs of objects are at once signs by 

 which he knows these objects, and knows them again; they 

 become tokens of things. And whilst be silently elaborates 

 the signs he has found for single objects, that is, whilst he de- 

 scribes their forms for himself in the air, or imitates them in 



1 Sicard, ' Cours d' Instruction d'un Sourd-muet;' Paris, 1803, pp. xlv, 18. 



C2 



