Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/53

Rh into the theatre, unless some one else tells him what the signs mean, he can make nothing of them. All men, indeed, desire a certain likeness in sign-making, that the signs should be as like as may be to that which is signified; but seeing that things may be like one another in many ways, such signs are not constant among men, unless by common consent."

Knowing what we do of mimic performances from other sources, we can, I think, only understand by this that natural gestures were very commonly conventionalized and abridged to save time and trouble, and not that arbitrary signs were used; and such abridgments, like the simplified sign for trading or swopping among the Indians, as well as the whole class of epithets and allusions which would grow up among mimics addressing their regular set of playgoers, would not be intelligible to a stranger. Christians, of course, did not frequent such performances in St. Augustine's time, but looked upon them as utterly abominable and devilish; nor can we accuse them of want of charity for this, when we consider the class of scenes that were commonly chosen for representation.

There seem to have been written lists of signs used to learn from, which are now lost. The mimic, it should be observed, had not the same difficulties to contend with as an Indian interpreter. In the first place, the stories represented were generally mythological, very usually love-passages of the gods and heroes, with which the whole audience was perfectly familiar; and, moreover, appropriate words were commonly sung while the mimic acted, so that he could apply all his skill to giving artistic illustrations of the tale as it went on. The pantomimic performances of Southern Europe may be taken as representing in some degree the ancient art, but it is likely that the mimicry in the modern ballet and the Eastern pantomimic plays falls much below the classical standard of excellence.

I have now noticed what I venture to call the principal dialects of the gesture-language. It is fit, however, that, gesture-signs having been spoken of as forming a complete and independent language by themselves, something should be said of their use