Gesture Language and Word Language. 455 



upon it, spoken language stands far behind acting. The spoken 

 narration must lose the sudden anxiety of the shepherd when 

 lie counts his flock and finds a sheep wanting, his hurried 

 penning up the rest, his running up hill and down dale, and 

 spying backwards and forwards, his face lighting up when he 

 catches sight of the missing sheep in the distance, his carrying 

 it home in his arms, hugging it as he goes." 



Passing from gesture language as in use amongst cultivated 

 deaf-mutes, Mr. Tylor traces its employment by various wild 

 tribes, who come into contact with each other, but who do not 

 understand each other's spoken language, and shows how they 

 have followed the same principles in devising appropriate signs 

 as are in use in the Berlin Institution, or in other gatherings 

 of deaf-mutes. He likewise refers to the gesture language 

 employed by the Cistercian monks to mitigate their absurd 

 rule of self-mortification, which interdicted speech except 

 upon religious matters, and shows, by reference to a dictionary 

 collated by Leibnitz, how closely their signs resemble those 

 made by the deaf and dumb. 



The question of the extent to which spoken languages 

 bear traces of the same processes of thought and reasoning 

 that are shown in the construction of gesture language, is a 

 highly curious one, which, if carefully worked out, must have 

 an ethnological as well as a philological value. Mr. Tylor 

 supplies some very interesting reflections on this subject. He 

 likewise enters into an inquiry concerning the existence of 

 tribes who cannot communicate with each other by words 

 only, but need to supplement their spoken language by that 

 of signs. It is very difficult to ascertain such facts beyond a 

 doubt. The use of gesture does not necessarily show that 

 ideas could not be conveyed to other persons without it, but 

 we think it highly probable that some savage tribes should 

 possess more ideas than they have invented articulate sounds 

 to express, and that when they have to be represented it must 

 be in the gesture or pictorial form. 



It must be remembered, that the deaf-mutes who have 

 gone so far in the construction of a gesture speech, have done 

 so under the constant stimulating influence of persons who 

 know how to observe, to think, and to speak. In dealing with 

 persons deficient in any one of the five senses, ib is, as Mr. 

 Bird, the blind surgeon, has so well shown in reference "to 

 those afflicted with loss of sight, essential to their develop- 

 ment that they should come freely into contact with educated 

 persons in a normal state. Left alone, the deaf-mutes would 

 have had few signs, because they would have had little know- 

 ledge and few ideas. By showing them objects they would 

 not have noticed of their own accord, and imparting ideas 



