264 DARWINISM STATED BY DARWIN HIMSELF. 



ing. The fact of the gestures being now innate would 

 be no valid objection to the belief that they were at first 

 intentional ; for, if practiced during many generations, 

 they would probably at last be inherited. NeTertheless, 

 it is more than doubtful, as we shall immediately see, 

 whether any of the cases which come under our present 

 head of antithesis have thus originated. 



With conventional signs which are not innate, such 

 as those used by the deaf and dumb and by savages, the 

 principle of opposition or antithesis has been partially 

 brought into play. The Cistercian monks thought it sin- 

 ful to speak, and, as they could not avoid holding some 

 communication, they invented a gesture language, in 

 which the principle of opposition seems to have been em- 

 ployed. Dr. Scott, of the Exeter Deaf and Dumb Insti- 

 tution, writes to me that " opposites are greatly used in 

 teaching the deaf and dumb, who have a lively sense of 

 them." Nevertheless I have been surprised how few une- 

 quivocal instances can be adduced. This depends partly 

 on all the signs having commonly had some natural 

 origin ; and partly on the practice of the deaf and dumb 

 and of savages to contract their signs as much as possible 

 for the sake of rapidity. Hence their natural source or 

 origin often becomes doubtful, or is completely lost 5 as 

 is likewise the case with articulate language. 



When a cat, or rather when some early pro- 

 genitor of the species, from feeling affection- 

 ate, first slightly arched its back, held its tail perpen- 

 dicularly upward and pricked its ears, can it be believed 

 that the animal consciously wished thus to show that 

 its frame of mind was directly the reverse of that when, 

 from being ready to fight or to spring on its prey, it as- 

 sumed a crouching attitude, curled its tail from side to 



