GESTUEE-LANGUAGE AND WORD-LANGUAGE. 69 



a distinction to him between one tting and another, become, 

 when he imitates objects and actions in the air with hands, 

 fingers, and gestures, suitable signs, which serve him as a 

 means of fixing ideas in his mind, and recalling them to his 

 memory, and that thus he makes himself signs, which, scanty 

 and imperfect as they may be, yet serve to open a way for 

 thought, and these thoughts and signs develope themselves 

 further and further. Very similar is Professor SteinthaPs 

 opinion, which, to some extent, agrees with the theory of the 

 manifestation of the Ego adopted by Heyse, but gives a larger 

 definition to " utterance." Man, " even when he has no per- 

 ception of sound, can yet manifest to himself through any other 

 sense that which is contained in his sensible certainty, can set 

 forth an object out of himself, and separate himself, his Ego, 

 as something permanent and universal, from that which is 

 transitory and particular, even if he does not at once compre- 

 hend this universal something in the form of the Ego." The 

 same writer, after assertiag that mind and speech are deve- 

 loped together ; that the mind does not originally mahe speech, 

 but that it is speech ; that language shapes itself in mind, or 

 mind shapes itself in language, goes on to qualify these asser- 

 tions. " We recognize the power of language not so much in 

 the sound, as in the inward process. But it is as certain that 

 this goes forward in the deaf-mute, as it is that he is a human 

 being, flesh of human flesh and spirit of infinite spirit. But 

 it goes forward in him in a somewhat difierent form," etc.^ 



Whether the human mind is capable of exercising at all any 

 of its peculiarly human functions without any means of utter- 

 ance, or not, we shall all admit that it could have gone but 

 very little way, could only just have passed the line which 

 divides beast from man. All experience concurs to prove, that 

 the mental powers and the stock of ideas of those human 

 beings who have but imperfect means of utterance, are imper- 

 fect and scanty in proportion to those means. The manner in 

 which we can see such persons accompanying their thought 

 with the utterance which is most convenient to them, shows 

 to how great a degree thought is " talking to oneself." The 

 1 Steinthal, Spr. der T., pp. 907, 909. 



