Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/54

44 as an accompaniment to spoken language. We in England make comparatively little use of these signs, but they have been and are in use in all quarters of the world as highly important aids to conversation. Thus, Captain Cook says of the Tahitians, after mentioning their habit of counting upon their fingers, that "in other instances, we observed that, when they were conversing with each other, they joined signs to their words, which were so expressive that a stranger might easily apprehend their meaning;" and Charlevoix describes, in almost the same words, the expressive pantomime with which an Indian orator accompanied his discourse.

Gesticulation goes along with speech, to explain and empha- size it, among all mankind. Savage and half-civilized races accompany their talk with expressive pantomime much more than nations of higher culture. The continual gesticulation of Hindoos, Arabs, Greeks, as contrasted with the more northern nations of Europe, strikes every traveller who sees them; and the colloquial pantomime of Naples is the subject of a special treatise. But we cannot lay down a rule that gesticulation decreases as civilization advances, and say, for instance, that a Southern Frenchman, because his talk is illustrated with gestures, as a book with pictures, is less civilized than a German or an Englishman.

We English are perhaps poorer in the gesture-language than any other people in the world. We use a form of words to denote what a gesture or a tone would express. Perhaps it is because we read and write so much, and have come to think and talk as we should write, and so let fall those aids to speech which cannot be carried into the written language.

The few gesture-signs which are in common use among ourselves are by no means unworthy of examination; but we have lived for so many centuries in a highly artificial state of society, that some of them cannot be interpreted with any certainty, and the most that we can do is to make a good guess at their original meaning. Some, it is true, such as beckoning or motioning