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Show 8 ARGUMENTS FOR PRIORITY OF GESTURE, enough, used the precise signs made by his neighbors. It is further asserted that semi- idiotic children who cannot be taught more than the merest rudiments of speech can receive a considerable amount of knowledge through signs and express themselves by them, and that sufferers from aphasia continue to use appropriate gestures after their words are uncontrollable. In cases where men have been long in solitary confinement, been abandoned, or otherwise have become isolated from their fellows, they have lost speech entirely, in which they required to be reinstructed through gestures in the same manner that missionaries, explorers, and shipwrecked mariners became acquainted with tongues before unknown to civilization. These facts are to be considered in connection with the general law of evolution, that in cases of degeneration the last and highest acquirements are lost first. The fact that the deaf- mute thinks without phonetic expression is a stumbling- block to MAX MULLER'S ingenious theory of primitive speech, to the effect that man had a creative faculty giving to each conception, as it thrilled through his brain for the first time, a special phonetic expression, which faculty became extinct when its necessity ceased. In conjecturing the first attempts of man or his hypothetical ancestor at the expression either of percepts or concepts, it is difficult to connect vocal sounds with any large number of objects, but readily conceivable that there should have been resort, next to actual touch ( of which all the senses may be modifications) to suggest the characteristics of their forms and movements to the eye- fully exercised before the tongue- so soon as the arms and fingers became free for the requisite simulation or portrayal. There is no distinction between pantomime and sign- language except that the former is the parent of the latter, which is more abbreviated and less obvious. Pantomime acts movements, reproduces forms and positions, presents pictures, and manifests emotions with greater realization than any other mode of utterance. It may readily be supposed that a trogdolyte man would desire to communicate the finding of a cave in the vicinity of a pure pool, circled with soft grass, and shaded by trees bearing edible fruit. No natural sound is connected with any of those objects, but the - position and size of the cave, its distance and direction, the water, its quality, and |