Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes | Page 6

emotion. But it is not enough that
those signs should be available as the vehicle of the producer's own
thoughts. They must be also efficient for the communication of such
thoughts to others. It has been, until of late years, generally held that
thought was not possible without oral language, and that, as man was
supposed to have possessed from the first the power of thought, he also
from the first possessed and used oral language substantially as at
present. That the latter, as a special faculty, formed the main distinction
between man and the brutes has been and still is the prevailing doctrine.
In a lecture delivered before the British Association in 1878 it was
declared that "animal intelligence is unable to elaborate that class of
abstract ideas, the formation of which depends upon the faculty of
speech." If instead of "speech" the word "utterance" had been used, as

including all possible modes of intelligent communication, the
statement might pass without criticism. But it may be doubted if there
is any more necessary connection between abstract ideas and sounds,
the mere signs of thought, that strike the ear, than there is between the
same ideas and signs addressed only to the eye.
The point most debated for centuries has been, not whether there was
any primitive oral language, but what that language was. Some
literalists have indeed argued from the Mosaic narrative that because
the Creator, by one supernatural act, with the express purpose to form
separate peoples, had divided all tongues into their present varieties,
and could, by another similar exercise of power, obliterate all but one
which should be universal, the fact that he had not exercised that power
showed it not to be his will that any man to whom a particular speech
had been given should hold intercourse with another miraculously set
apart from him by a different speech. By this reasoning, if the study of
a foreign tongue was not impious, it was at least clear that the primitive
language had been taken away as a disciplinary punishment, as the
Paradisiac Eden had been earlier lost, and that, therefore, the search for
it was as fruitless as to attempt the passage of the flaming sword. More
liberal Christians have been disposed to regard the Babel story as
allegorical, if not mythical, and have considered it to represent the
disintegration of tongues out of one which was primitive. In accordance
with the advance of linguistic science they have successively shifted
back the postulated primitive tongue from Hebrew to Sanscrit, then to
Aryan, and now seek to evoke from the vasty deeps of antiquity the
ghosts of other rival claimants for precedence in dissolution. As,
however, the languages of man are now recognized as extremely
numerous, and as the very sounds of which these several languages are
composed are so different that the speakers of some are unable to
distinguish with the ear certain sounds in others, still less able to
reproduce them, the search for one common parent language is more
difficult than was supposed by mediæval ignorance.
The discussion is now, however, varied by the suggested possibility
that man at some time may have existed without any oral language. It is
conceded by some writers that mental images or representations can be

formed without any connection with sound, and may at least serve for
thought, though not for expression. It is certain that concepts, however
formed, can be expressed by other means than sound. One mode of this
expression is by gesture, and there is less reason to believe that gestures
commenced as the interpretation of, or substitute for words than that
the latter originated in, and served to translate gestures. Many
arguments have been advanced to prove that gesture language preceded
articulate speech and formed the earliest attempt at communication,
resulting from the interacting subjective and objective conditions to
which primitive man was exposed. Some of the facts on which
deductions have been based, made in accordance with well-established
modes of scientific research from study of the lower animals, children,
idiots, the lower types of mankind, and deaf-mutes, will be briefly
mentioned.

_GESTURES OF THE LOWER ANIMALS._
Emotional expression in the features of man is to be considered in
reference to the fact that the special senses either have their seat in, or
are in close relation to the face, and that so large a number of nerves
pass to it from the brain. The same is true of the lower animals, so that
it would be inferred, as is the case, that the faces of those animals are
also expressive of emotion. There is also noticed among them an
exhibition of emotion by corporeal action. This is the class of gestures
common to them with the earliest made by man, as above mentioned,