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Show PRACTICAL VALUE OF SIGN- LANGUAGE. 3 many- tongued subjects. This advantage is not merely theoretical, but has been demonstrated to be practical by a professor in a deaf- mute college x who, lately visiting several of the wild tribes of the plains, made himself understood among all of them without knowing a word of any of their languages; nor would it only obtain in connection with American tribes, being applicable to intercourse with savages in Africa and Asia, though it is not pretended to fulfill by this agency the schoolmen's dream of an oecumenical mode of communication between all peoples in spite of their dia-. lectic divisions. Sign- language, being the mother utterance of nature, poetically styled by LAMABTINE the visible attitudes of the soul, is superior to all others in that it permits every one to find in nature an image to express his thoughts on the most needful matters intelligently to any other person, though it must ever henceforth be inferior in the power of formulating thoughts now attained by words, notwithstanding the boast of Rosctus that he could convey more varieties of sentiment by gesture alone than Cicero could in oratory. It is true that gestures excel in graphic and dramatic effect applied to narrative and to rhetorical exhibition; but speech, when highly cultivated, is better adapted to generalization and abstraction; therefore to logic and metaphysics. Some of the enthusiasts in signs have, however, contended that this unfavorable distinction is not from any inherent incapability, but because their employment has not been continued unto perfection, and that if they had been elaborated by the secular labor devoted to spoken language they might in resources and distinctness have exceeded many forms of the latter. GALLAUDET, PEET, and others may be right in asserting that man could by his arms, hands, and fingers, with facial and bodily accentuation, express any idea that could be conveyed by words. The process regarding abstract ideas is only a variant from that of oral speech, in which the words for the most abstract ideas, such as law, virtue, infinitude, and immortality, are shown by MAX MULLER to have been derived and deduced, that is, abstracted from sensuous impressions. Jn the use of. signs the countenance and manner as well as the tenor decide whether objects themselves are intended, or the forms, positions, qualities, and motions of other objects which are suggested, and signs for moral and |