Part 1 (2/2)
”Exhibiting serious deliberation, then hesitation, acco perturbation, as if I knew not how to feel or what to do
”Looking first at one of the persons before ether, _as a father would look_, indicating his distressful parental feelings under such afflicting circue was coinary persons before me the decided look of the inflexible commander, as deter and acting as if the tender and forgiving feelings of _the father_ had again got the ascendency, and as if I was about to relent and pardon the states of mind I portrayed several tiraphic and ith the father yields, and the stern principle of justice, as expressed in my countenance andof the sentence of death on the offenders, and the ordering them away to execution
”He quickly turned round to his slate and wrote a correct and complete account of this story of Brutus and his two sons”
While it appears that the expressions of the features are not confined to the e synony of the saers is often modified, individualized, or accentuated by associated facial changes and postures of the body not essential to the sign, which ees and postures are at once thewhen intelligently reported, not only because they infuse life into the skeleton sign, but because theyto the class of innate expressions
THE ORIGIN OF SIGN LANGUAGE
In observing the inning is known, it becoe through its connection with that of oral speech In this exaue popular ieneral character of that now used a mankind, is ”natural” to uages were at so thee has been thoroughly studied it has becorew out of soation of these old forms it has been so difficult to ascertain how any of them first became a useful instru theories on this subject have been advocated
Oral language consists of variations and ht and ens should be available as the vehicle of the producer's own thoughts They hts 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 froht, he also froe substantially as at present That the latter, as a special faculty, formed the main distinction betweendoctrine In a lecture delivered before the British association in 1878 it was declared that ”anience 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 ht pass without criticism
But it may be doubted if there is any more necessary connection between abstract ideas and sounds, the ht, that strike the ear, than there is between the sans addressed only to the eye
The point most debated for centuries has been, not whether there was any prie was Soued from the Mosaic narrative that because the Creator, by one supernatural act, with the express purpose to forues 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 iven should hold intercourse with another miraculously set apart fro, if the study of a foreign tongue was not ie 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 atte sword More liberal Christians have been disposed to regard the Babel story as allegorical, if not ration of tongues out of one which was priuistic science they have successively shi+fted back the postulated priue from Hebrew to Sanscrit, then to Aryan, and now seek to evoke frohosts of other rival claies of nized as extremely nues are composed are so different that the speakers of souish with the ear certain sounds in others, still less able to reproduce thee is norance
The discussion is noever, varied by the suggested possibility that e It is conceded by soes or representations can be formed without any connection with sound, and h not for expression It is certain that concepts, however formed, can be expressed by other esture, 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 argue preceded articulate speech and for fro subjective and objective conditions to which primitive man was exposed Some of the facts on which deductions have been based, made in accordance ell-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 e them an exhibition of eestures common to them with the earliest made by man, as above mentioned, and it is reasonable to suppose that those were made by man at the time when, if ever, he was, like the animals, destitute of articulate speech The articulate cries uttered by so as connected with the principle of iin, but in the cases of forced imitation, the mere acquisition of a vocal trick, they only serve to illustrate that power of i, after his cage had been opened, would have continued to coet out If the bird had uttered an instinctive cry of distress when in confinement and a note of joy on release, there would have been a nearer approach to language than if it had clearly pronounced many sentences Such notes and cries of animals, many of which are connected with reproduction and nutrition, are orth enerally it is to be questioned if they are so expressive as the gestures of the sauishable into fear, defiance, invitation, and a note of warning, but it also appears that those notes have been known only since the ani are farfor attack, or caressing hisfor food, or si attention The chief modern use of his tail appears to be to express his ideas and sensations But some recent experiments of Prof A GRAHAM BELL, no less eminent from his work in artificial speech than in telephones, shows that ani articulate sounds than has been supposed He informed the writer that he recently succeeded by lish terrier to form a nuht out from it the words ”How are you, Grandmamma?” with distinctness This tends to prove that only absence of brain power has kept ani true speech The renificance as well as in imitation, if its brain had been developed beyond the point of expression by gesture, in which latter the bird is expert
The gestures of monkeys, whose hands and arms can be used, are nearly akin to ours Insects communicate with each other aleneral which, though not deaf, can not be taught by sound, frequently have been by signs, and probably all of theestures better than his speech They exhibit signs to one another with obvious intention, and they also have often invented the their wants from man
_GESTURES OF YOUNG CHILDREN_
The wishes and e children are conveyed in a sestures and facial expressions A child's gestures are intelligent long in advance of speech; although very early and persistent atteive it instruction in the latter but none in the fornoscere ht, and learns theht Long after faestures and facial expressions of its parents and nurses as if seeking thus to translate or explain their words These facts are iic law that the order of development of the individual is the saestures co the lips, or pouting, when soesture is now ly e tribes ofearly youth, and subsequently lose, characters once possessed by their progenitors when adult, and still retained by distinct species nearly related to thenored that children invent words as well as signs with as natural an origin for the one as for the other
An interesting case was furnished to the writer by Prof BELL of an infant boy who used a coiven as ”nyuood,” and not only in reference to articles of food relished but as applied to persons of whom the child was fond, rather in the abstract idea of ”niceness”
in general It is a singular coincidence that a bright young girl, a friend of the writer, in a letter describing a juvenile feast, invented the sa, as characteristic of her sensations regarding the delicacies provided
The Papuans ” _nam-nam_ But the evidence of all such cases of the voluntary use of articulate speech by young children is qualified by the fact that it has been inherited fro as the faculty of gesture