Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/28

18 those who cannot speak, and must therefore have recourse to other means of communication. The opinions of two or three practical observers may be cited to show that the gesture-language is not, like the finger-alphabet, an art learnt in the first instance from the teacher, but an independent process originating in the mind of the deaf-mute, and developing itself as his knowledge and power of reasoning expand under instruction.

Samuel Heinicke, the founder of deaf-and-dumb teaching in Germany, remarks: "He (the deaf-mute) prefers keeping to his pantomime, which is simple and short, and comes to him fluently as a mother-tongue." Schmalz says: "Not less comprehensible are many signs which we indeed do not use in ordinary life, but which the deaf-and-dumb child uses, having no means of communicating with others but by signs. These signs consist principally in drawing in the air the shape of objects to be suggested to the mind, indicating their character, imitating the movement of the body in an action to be described, or the use of a thing, its origin, or any other of its notable peculiarities." "With regard to signs," says Dr. Scott, of Exeter, "the (deaf-and-dumb) child will most likely have already fixed upon signs by which it names most of the objects given in the above lesson (pin, key, etc.), and which it uses in its intercourse with its friends. These signs had always better be retained (by the child's family), and if a word has not received such a sign, endeavour to get the child to fix upon one. It will do this most probably better than you."

The Abbé Sicard, one of the first and most eminent of the men who have devoted their lives to the education and "humanizing" of these afflicted creatures, has much the same account to give. "It is not I," he says, "who am to invent these signs. I have only to set forth the theory of them under the dictation of their true inventors, those whose language consists of these signs. It is for the deaf-and-dumb to make them, and for me to tell how they are made. They must be drawn from the nature of the objects they are to represent. It is only the