Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/26

16 do is a question to which we cannot as yet give the shadow of an answer, and if we had been taught to say "stand" where we now say "go," and "go" where we now say "stand," it would be practically all the same to us. No doubt there was a sufficient reason for these words receiving the meanings they now bear, as indeed there is a sufficient reason for everything; but so far as we are concerned, there might as well have been none, for we have quite lost sight of the connexion between the word and the idea. But in the gesture-language the relation between idea and sign not only always exists, but is scarcely lost sight of for a moment. When a deaf-and-dumb child holds his two first fingers forked like a pair of legs, and makes them stand and walk upon the table, we want no teaching to show us what this means, nor why it is done.

This definition of the gesture-language is, however, not complete. Such objects as are actually in the presence of the speaker, or may be supposed so, are brought bodily into the conversation by touching, pointing, or looking towards them, either to indicate the objects themselves or one of their characteristics. Thus if a deaf-and-dumb man touches his underlip with his forefinger, the context must decide whether he means to indicate the lip itself or the colour "red," unless, as is sometimes done, he shows by actually taking hold of the lip with finger and thumb, that it is the lip itself, and not its quality, that he means. Under the two classes "pictures in the air" and things brought before the mind by actual pointing out, the whole of the sign-language may be included.

It is in Deaf-and-Dumb Institutions that the gesture-language may be most conveniently studied, and what slight practical knowledge I have of it has been got in this way in Germany and in England. In these institutions, however, there are grammatical signs used in the gesture-language which do not fairly belong to it. These are mostly signs adapted, or perhaps invented, by teachers who had the use of speech, to express ideas which do not come within the scope of the very limited natural grammar and dictionary of the deaf-and-dumb. But it is to be observed that though the deaf-and-dumb have been taught to understand these signs and use them in school, they ignore them