Hor. What! do not men speak to be understood?
Cleo. In one sense they do; but there is a double meaning in those words, which I believe you did not intend: if by man’s speaking to be understood you mean, that when men speak, they desire that the purport of the sounds they utter should be known and apprehended by others, I answer in the affirmative: but if you mean by it, that men speak, in order that their thoughts may be known, and their sentiments laid open and seen through by others, which likewise may be meant by speaking to be understood, I answer in the negative. The first sign or sound that ever man made, born of a woman, was made in behalf, and intended for the use of him who made it; and I am of opinion, that the first design of speech was to persuade others, either to give credit to what the speaking person would have them believe; or else to act or suffer such things, as he would compel them to act or suffer, if they were entirely in his power.
Hor. Speech is likewise made use of to teach, advise, and inform others for their benefit, as well as to persuade them in our own behalf.
Cleo. And so by the help of it men may accuse themselves and own their crimes; but nobody would have invented speech for those purposes; I speak of the design, the first motive and intention that put man upon speaking. We see in children that the first things they endeavour to express with words are their wants and their will; and their speech is but a confirmation of what they asked, denied, or affirmed, by signs before.
Hor. But why do you imagine that people would continue to make use of signs and gestures, after they could sufficiently express themselves in words?
Cleo. Because signs confirm words, as much as words do signs; and we see, even in polite people, that when they are very eager they can hardly forbear making use of both. When an infant, in broken imperfect gibberish, calls for a cake or a play-thing, and at the same time points at and reaches after it, this double endeavour makes a stronger impression upon us, than if the child had spoke its wants in plain words, without making any signs, or else looked at and reached after the thing wanted, without attempting to speak. Speech and action assist and corroborate one another, and experience teaches us that they move us much more, and are more persuasive jointly than separately; vis unita fortior; and when an infant makes use of both, he acts from the same principle that an orator does when he joins proper gestures to an elaborate declamation.
Hor. From what you have said it should seem that action is not only more natural, but likewise more ancient than speech itself, which before I should have thought a paradox.
Cleo. Yet it is true; and you shall always find that the most forward, volatile, and fiery tempers make more use of gestures when they speak, than others that are more patient and sedate.
Hor. It is a very diverting scene to see how this is overdone among the French, and still more among the Portuguese: I have often been amazed to see what distortions of face and body, as well as other strange gesticulations with hands and feet, some of them will make in their ordinary discourses: But nothing was more offensive to me, when I was abroad, than the loudness and violence which most foreigners speak with, even among persons of quality, when a dispute arises, or any thing is to be debated: before I was used to it, it put me always upon my guard; for I did not question but they were angry; and I often recollected what had been said in order to consider whether it was not something I ought to have resented.
Cleo. The natural ambition and strong desire men have to triumph over, as well as persuade others, are the occasion of all this. Heightening and lowering the voice at proper seasons, is a bewitching engine to captivate mean understandings; and loudness is an assistant to speech, as well as action is: uncorrectness, false grammar, and even want of sense, are often happily drowned in noise and great bustle; and many an argument has been convincing, that had all its force from the vehemence it was made with: the weakness of the language itself may be palliatively cured by strength of elocution.