Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/31

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To "speak" is to move the lips as in speaking (all the deaf- and-dumb are taught to speak in articulate words in the Berlin establishment), and to move the lips thus, while pointing with the fore-finger out from the mouth, is "name," or "to name," as though one should define it to "point out by speaking."

The outline of the shape of roof and walls done in the air with two hands is "house;" with a flat roof it is "room. To smell as at a flower, and then with the two hands make a horizontal circle before one, is "garden."

To pull up a pinch of flesh from the back of one's hand is "flesh" or "meat." Make the steam curling up from it with the fore-finger, and it becomes "roast meat." Make a bird's bill with two fingers in front of one's lips and flap with the arms, and that means "goose;" put the first sign and these together, and we have "roast goose."

How natural all these imitative signs are. They want no elaborate explanation. To seize the most striking outline of an object, the principal movement of an action, is the whole secret, and this is what the rudest savage can do untaught, nay, what is more, can do better and more easily than the educated man. "None of my teachers here who can speak," said the Director of the Institution, "are very strong in the gesture-language. It is difficult for an educated speaking man to get the proficiency in it which a deaf-and-dumb child attains to almost without an effort. It is true that I can use it perfectly; but I have been here forty years, and I made it my business from the first to become thoroughly master of it. To be able to speak is an impediment, not an assistance, in acquiring the gesture-language. The habit of thinking in words, and translating these words into signs, is most difficult to shake off; but until this is done, it is hardly possible to place the signs in the logical sequence in which they arrange themselves in the mind of the deaf-mute."

As new things come under the notice of the deaf-and-dumb,