Fig. 44.—Georgians.
Fig. 45.—Swedes.
Fig. 46.—Gypsy.
Thus to map out the nations of the world among a few main varieties of man, and their combinations, is, in spite of its difficulty and uncertainty, a profitable task. But to account for the origin of these great primary varieties or races themselves, and exactly to assign to them their earliest homes, cannot be usefully attempted in the present scantiness of evidence. If man’s first appearance was in a geological period when the distribution of land and sea and the climates of the earth were not as now, then on both sides of the globe, outside the present tropical zones, there were regions whose warmth and luxuriant vegetation would have favoured man’s life with least need of civilized arts, and whence successive waves of population may have spread over cooler climates. It may perhaps be reasonable to imagine as latest-formed the white race of the temperate region, least able to bear extreme heat or live without the appliances of culture, but gifted with the powers of knowing and ruling which give them sway over the world.
CHAPTER IV.
LANGUAGE.
Sign-making, [114]—Gesture-language, [114]—Sound-gestures, [120]—Natural Language, [122]—Utterances of Animals, [122]—Emotional and Imitative Sounds in Language, [124]—Change of Sound and Sense, [127]—Other expression of Sense by Sound, [128]—Children’s Words, [128]—Articulate Language, its relation to Natural Language, [129]—Origin of Language, [130].
There are various ways in which men can communicate with one another. They can make gestures, utter cries, speak words, draw pictures, write characters or letters. These are signs of various sorts, and to understand how they do their work, let us begin by looking at such signs as are most simple and natural.