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Show 10 MODERN USE OF GESTURES AND SIGNS. upon a compact between the speaker and hearer which presupposes the existence of a prior mode of communication. For the present purpose there is, however, no need to determine upon the priority between communication of ideas by bodily motion and by vocal articulation. It is enough to admit that the connection between them was so early and intimate that the gestures, in the wide sense indicated of presenting ideas under physical forms, had a direct formative effect upon many words; that they exhibit the earliest condition of the human mind; are tx- aced from the farthest antiquity among all peoples possessing records; are universally prevalent in the savage stage of social evolution; survive agreeably in the scenic pantomime, and still adhere to the ordinary speech of civilized man by motiono of the face, hands, head, and body, ofton involuntary, often purposely in illustration or emphasis. MODERN USE OF GESTURES AND SIGNS. The power of the visible gesture relative to" and its influence upon the words of modern oral speech are perhaps, with the qualification hereafter indicated, in inverse proportion to the general culture, but do not bear that or any constant proportion to the development of the several languages with which gesture is still more or less associated They are affected more by the sociological conditions of the speakers than by the degree of excellence of their tongue. The statement is. frequently made that gesture is yet to some highly- advanced languages a necessary modifying factor, and that only when a language has become so artificial as to be completely expressible in written signs- indeed, has been remodeled through their long familiar use- can the bodily signs be wholly dispensed with. The story has been told by travelers in many parts of the world that various languages cannot be clearly understood in the dark by their possessors, using their mother tongue between themselves. The evidence for this anywhere is suspicious, and when it is, as it often has been, asserted about some of the tribes of North American Indians, it is absolutely false, and must be attributed to the error of travelers who, ignorant of the dialect, never see the natives except when trying to make themselves intelligible to their visitors by a practice which they have found by experience to have |
