60 GESTUEE-LANGUAGE AND WOED-LANGUAGB. 



language that can be compared with tlie gestures by which 

 this process is performed ? Quintilian incidentally answers the 

 question. "As for the hands indeed, without which action 

 would be maimed and feeble, one can hardly say how many 

 movements they have, when they almost follow the whole stock 

 of words ; for the other members help the speaker, but they, 

 I may almost say, themselves speak/' ..." Do they not in 

 pointing out ijlaces and persons, fulfil the purpose of adverbs 

 and pronouns ? so that in so great a diversity of tongues among 

 all peoples and nations this seems to me the common language 

 of all mankind ? " — " Manus vero, sine quibus trunca esset 

 actio ac debilis, vix dici potest, quot motus habeant, quum 

 paene ipsam verborum copiam persequantur ; nam caeterae 

 partes loquentem adjuvant, hae, prope est ut dicam, ipsae lo- 

 quuntui'. . , . Nan in denionstrandis locis ac personis adverhio- 

 riitn atque pronominum ohtinent vicem ? ut in tanta per omnes 

 gentes nationesque lingute diversitate hie mihi omnium homi- 

 num communis sei'mo videatur."^ 



Where a man stands is to him the centre of the universe, 

 and he refers the position of any object to himself, as before or 

 behind him, above or below him, and so on ; or he makes his 

 fore-linger issue, as it were, as a radius from this imaginary 

 centre, and, pointing in any direction into space, says that the 

 thing he points out is there. He defines the position of an ob- 

 ject somewhat as it is done in Analytical Geometry, using either 

 a radius vector, to which the demonstrative pronoun may partly 

 be compared, or referring it to three axes, as, in front or be- 

 hind, to the right or left, above or below. His body, however, 

 not being a point, but a structure of considerable size, he often 

 confuses his terms, as when he uses here for some spot only 

 comparatively near him, instead of making it come towards 

 the same imaginary centre whence there started. He can in 

 thought shift his centre of co-ordinates and the position of his 



' Quiut., Itist. Orat., lib. xi. 3, 85, seqq. " Luther f iilirt an das ist niein leib und 

 bemerkt dabei folgendes, ' das ist ein pronomen und lautet der buchstab a drinnen 

 stark und lang, als ware es gesdirieben also, dahas, wie ein schwabisch oder algau- 

 wiscli daas lautet, und wer es lioret, dam ist als stehe ein finger dabei der darauf 

 aeige ' " (Grimm, D. W., s. v. " der"). 



