GESTURE-LANGUAGE AND WORD-LANGUAGE. 79 



knew one of tliem at a loss for words sufficiently intelligible to 

 convey his meaning, not to his fellows only, but to the Sin- 

 ghalese of the neighbourhood, who are all, more or less, ac- 

 quainted with the Veddah patois."^ Dr. Milligan is, I believOj 

 our best authority as to the Tasmanians and their language, 

 but he probably had to trust in this matter to native informa- 

 tion, which is far from being always safe.^ Lastly, Captain 

 Burton only paid a flying visit to the Western Indians, and his 

 interpreters could hardly have given him scientific information 

 on such a subject. 



The point in question is one which it is not easy to bring to 

 a perfectly distinct issue, seeing that all people, savage and 

 civilized, do use signs more or less. As has been remarked 

 already, many savage tribes accompany their talk with ges- 

 tures to a great extent, and in conversation with foreigners, 

 gestures and words are usually mixed to express what is to be 

 said. It is extremely likely that Madame Pfeifier's savages 

 suffered the penalty of being set down as wanting in language, 

 for no worse fault than using a combination of words and signs 

 in order to make what they meant as clear as possible to her 

 comprehension. But the existence of a language incomplete, 

 even for ordinary purposes, without the aid of gesture-signs, 

 could only be proved by the evidence of an educated man so 

 familiar with the language in question, as to be able to say 

 from absolute personal knowledge not only what it can, but 

 what it cannot do, an amount of acquaintance to which I think 

 none of the writers quoted would lay claim. In the case of 

 languages spoken by very low races, like the Puris and the 

 Tasmanians, the difficulty of deciding such a point must be 

 very great. 



There is a point of- some practical importance involved in 

 the question, whether gestures or words are, so to speak, most 

 natural. If signs form an easier means for the reception and 

 expression of ideas than words, then idiots ought to learn to 

 understand and use gestures more readily than speech. I 

 have only been able to get a distinct answer to the question, 



> J. Bailey, in Tr. Eth. Soc. ; London, 1863, p. 300. 



^ The objection to trusting native information as to grammatical structure, may 



