Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/803

PHILOLOGY 767 complex object itself, and then whatever further may in the circumstances of its use be suggested by it. So, for example, the picture of a tree signifies primarily a tree, then perhaps wood, something made of wood, and so on ; that of a pair of outstretched wings signifies secondarily flight, then soaring, height, and whatever else these may lead to. No concrete thing is signifiable in its totality, or otherwise than by a facile analysis of its constituent qualities, and a selection of the one which is both suffi ciently characteristic in itself and capable of being called up by a sign before the mind addressed. Instru- And what quality shall be selected depends in great mental- me asure upon the instrumentality used for its signification, expres- Of such instrumentalities, men are possessed of a consider- sion. able variety. We must leave out of account that of depiction, as just instanced, because its employment belongs to a much more advanced state of cultivation, and leads the way to the invention not of speech but of the analogous and auxiliary art of writing. There remain gesture, or changes of position of the various parts of the body, especially of the most mobile parts, the arms and hands ; grimace, or the changes of expression of the features of the countenance (in strictness, a variety of the preceding) ; and utterance, or the production of audible sound. It cannot be doubted that, in the first stages of communicative expression, all these three were used to gether, each for the particular purposes which it was best calculated to serve. The nearest approach to such action that is now possible is when two persons, wholly ignorant of one another s speech, meet and need to communicate an imperfect correspondence, because each is trained to habits of expression, and works consciously, and with the advantage of long experience, towards making himself un derstood ; yet it is good for its main purpose. What they do, to reach mutual comprehension, is like what the first speechless men, unconsciously and infinitely more slowly, learned to do : face, hands, body, voice, are all put to use. It is altogether probable that gesture at first performed the principal part, even to such extent that the earliest human language may be said to have been a language of gesture-signs ; indeed, there exist at the present day such gesture-languages, as those in use between roving tribes of different speech that from time to time meet one another (the most noted example is that of the gesture-language, of a very considerable degree of development, of the prairie tribes of American Indians) ; or such signs as are the natural resort of those who by deafness are cut off from ordinary spoken intercourse with their fellows. Yet there never can have been a stage or period in which all the three instrumentalities were not put to use together. In fact, they are still all used together ; that is even now an ineffective speaking to which grimace and gesture ("action," as Demosthenes called them) are not added as enforcers ; and the lower the grade of development and culture of a language, the more important, even for intelligibility, is The their addition. But voice has won to itself the chief and voice. almost exclusive part in communication, insomuch that we call all communication " language" (i.e., " tonguiness") just as a race of mutes might call it "handiness," and talk (by gesture) of a handiness of grimace. This is not in the least because of any closer connexion of the thinking apparatus with the muscles that act to produce audible sounds than with those that act to produce visible motions ; not because there are natural uttered names for conceptions, any more than natural gestured names. It is simply a case of " survival of the fittest," or analogous to the pro cess by which iron has become the exclusive material of swords, and gold and silver of money : because, namely, experience has shown this to be the material best adapted to this special use. The advantages of voice are numerous and obvious. There is first its economy, as employing a mechanism that is available for little else, and leaving free for other purposes those indispensable instruments the hands. Then there is its superior perceptibleness : its nice differences impress themselves upon the sense at a distance at which visible motions become indistinct ; they are not hidden by intervening objects ; they allow the eyes of the listener as well as the hands of the speaker to be employed in other useful work ; they are as plain in the dark as in the light ; and they are able to catch and command the attention of one who is not to be reached in any other way. We might add as the third advantage a superior capability of variation and combination on the part of spoken sounds ; but this is not to be insisted on, inasmuch as we hardly know what a gesture -language might have become if men s ingenuity in expression had been expended through all time upon its elaboration ; and the superiority, however 1 real, can hardly have been obvious enough to serve as a motive : certainly, there are spoken languages now existing whose abundance of resources falls short of what is attainable by gesture. Oral utterance is the form which expression has inevitably taken, the sum of man s endowments being what it is ; but it would be a mistake to suppose that a necessity of any other kind is involved in their relation. The fundamental conditions of speech are man s grade of intellectual power and his social instinct ; these being given, his expression follows, availing itself of what means it finds best suited to its purpose ; if voice had been wanting, it would have taken the next best. So, in certain well-known cases, a marked artistic gift, on the part of individuals deprived of the use of hands, has found means of exercise in the feet instead. But men in general have hands, instruments of exquisite tact and power, to serve the needs of their intellect ; and so voice also, to provide and use the tools of thought ; there is no error in maintaining that the voice is given us for speech, if only we do not proceed to draw from such a dictum false conclusions as to the relation between thought and utterance. Man is created with bodily instruments suited to do the work prescribed by his mental capacities ; therein lies the harmony of his endowment. It is through imitation that all signification becomes Imita- directly suggestive. The first written signs are (as already tion - noticed) the depictions of visible objects, and could be nothing else ; and, by the same necessity, the first uttered signs were the imitations of audible sounds. To repro duce any sound of which the originating cause or the cir cumstances of production are known, brings up of course before the conception that sound, along with the originator, or circumstances of origination, or whatever else may be naturally associated with it. There are two special direc tions in which this mode of sign -making is fruitful: imitation of the sounds of external nature (as the cries of animals, and the noises of inanimate objects when in motion or acted on by other objects) and imitation of human sounds. The two are essentially one in principle, although by some held apart, or even opposed to each other, as respectively the imitative or onomatopoetic and the exclamatory or inter] ectional beginnings of speech ; they differ only in their spheres of significance, the one being especially suggestive of external objects, the other of inward feelings. There are natural human tones, indica tive of feeling, as there are natural gestures, poses, modes of facial expression, which either are immediately intel ligible to us (as is the warning cry of the hen to the day- old chicken), or have their value taught us by our earliest experiences. If we hear a cry of joy or a shriek of pain, a laugh or a groan, we need no explanation in words to tell us what it signifies, any Inore than when we see a sad face or a drooping attitude. So also the characteristic cry