1892.] Mental Evolution in Man and Lower Animals. | 603 
nel Mallery in his Dictionary of Indian Signs observes: “The 
sign language of the Indians, and the gesture system of deaf- 
mutes, and of all peoples, constitute together one language— 
the gesture speech of mankind—of which each system is a 
dialect.” 
In Italy the power of expression by pantomine is particu- 
larly strongly developed, and whole plays are carried out 
through the use of gestures alone, and are thoroughly enjoyed 
by the people. Even in England, where gestures are less used 
than in any other country, one is astonished at the number of 
ideas which we can, and do, express by gestures. Knowing 
the strong influence of atavism, it is a legitimate deduction 
from the world-wide prevalence of gesture language that ges- 
tures formed an important part of the original means of com- 
munication between human beings, and if we are to judge 
from ontogeny, preceded the imitation of sounds in nature and 
the arbitrary invention of words, and developed pari parsu 
with the original howls and shrieks of primitive man. Tribes 
still exist whose words are unintelligible without the aid of 
gesture, and who are unable to carry on a conversation in the 
dark. 
Researches into the mental faculties of civilized children 
and uncivilized men, as well as into the mental faculties of 
the highest animals, such as the elephant, the monkey and the 
dog, show, as was said at the beginning of this article, a dif- 
ference of degree but not of kind. Immense is the distance 
between the mind of a Shakespeare or a Newton and the mind 
of a Hottentot. But the distance is also immense between the 
green scum, the one-celled alga of our ponds and ditches and 
the lordly oak ; yet each belongs to the vegetable kingdom, 
and there is no break in the innumerable forms which fill up 
the wide space between the pond scum and the oak. 
With regard to the theory that language is a divine gift 
from the very beginning bestowed upon man and denied to 
the lower animals, some light is thrown by the condition of 
what may be called ‘relapsed man;’ those cases where chil- 
dren have either been reared by and with wild animals or 
