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Show 134 THE CODE OF TERPSICHORE. which he was attacked, he expresses its howling, roaring, or peculiar cry, by the effect of his o w n voice; its form and motions he describes by the gesticulations of his hands, arms, or head; and this species of signs may be called imitative. " When the same person would express his own peculiar wants, fears, or any feeling which the eye cannot perceive, he first exhibits those peculiar attitudes which are produced by such feelings. B. seeing the place where he had been affrighted, will repeat the cries of fear, and the movements of terror, in order that his companion, A., may not expose himself to the same danger which he had experienced. A person deaf and dumb, wishing to show how he was trampled on by a horse, first describes the swift motion of the horse's feet with his hands, and then with his fingers he traces out on his body those parts that have been injured, showing at the same time how he fell. " After exhibiting those external signs which accompany the affections, the savage, like a deaf and dumb person, seizes on the resemblance he finds between the internal sensations of the mind and the external qualities of bodies, employing the latter to express the former. Thus, violent anger is compared to the flame or the tempest; tranquillity of mind to a serene sky ; doubt is expressed by the two hands that would weigh two bodies;-and such signs as these are called figurative or symbolic. " These indicative, imitative, and figurative gestures then, provide a threefold means of communication between ideas and feelings, enlisting into their service all the aids afforded by the laws of association. " T o give a class of those elementary materials, of which this language is composed, w e must reduce them into three kinds, namely gestures, sounds, and symbolic writing. " The first class comprehends those actions and attitudes of the body employed to express the form or motiou of a visible object; the second contains those sounds of the voice with which is described the cry of animals, or the noise accompanying the motion of inanimate bodies ; the third comprehends those hieroglyphics which are frequently traced upon the sand, the bark of trees, or any other surface to indicate visible objects, or the motions appertaining to them." M. GIOIA. 6. Were it possible to put such a project into execution, would itnot be more adapted to the formation of a universal language than the chimerical plans of George's 'Kalmar' ? (See his Essay on a Philosophical and Universal Language : a work which, like all others that have been written J)y great authors upon the subject, is replete with useless speculative ideas, about as easy in execution as the ingenious method of Dean Swift, in his Voyage to Laputa.) |