Referring again to the schema (page 88), it is needless to consider cases 1 and 2, for evidently these are on a psychological level in man and animals. Case 3, also, especially in the direction of its branch 4, is to a large extent psychologically equivalent in men and animals: so far as there is any difference it depends on the higher psychical nature of man being much more rich in ideas which find their natural expression in gestures or tones, and which, therefore, are impossible in brutes. But it will be conceded that here there is nothing to explain. The fact that man has a mind more richly endowed with ideas carries with it, as a matter of course, the fact that their natural expression is more multiplex.
The case, however, is different when we arrive at conventional signs; for these attain so enormous a development in man as compared with animals, that the question whether they do not really depend on some additional mental faculty, distinct in kind, becomes fully admissible.
The first thing, then, we have to notice with regard to conventional signs as used by man is, that no line of strict demarcation can be drawn between them and natural signs; the latter shade off into the former by gradations, which it becomes impossible to detect over large numbers of individual cases. With respect to tones, for example, it cannot be said, in many instances, whether this and that modulation, which is now recognized as expressive of a certain state of feeling, has always been thus expressive, or has only become so by conventional habit; although, if we consider the different tones by which different races of mankind express some of their similar feelings, we may be sure that in these cases one or other of the differences must be due to conventional habit—just as in the converse cases, in which all mankind use the same tones to express the same feelings, we may be sure that this mode of expression is natural. And so with gestures. Many which at first sight we should, judging from our own feelings alone, suppose to be natural—such, for instance, as kissing—are shown by observation of primitive races to be conventional; while others which we should probably regard as conventional—such, for instance, as shrugging the shoulders—are shown by the same means to be natural.[66]
But for our present purposes it is clearly a matter of no consequence that we should be able to classify all signs as natural or conventional. For it is certain that animals employ both; and hence no distinction between the brute and the man can be raised on the question of the kind of signs which they severally employ as natural or conventional. This distinction, therefore, may in future be disregarded, and natural and conventional signs, if made intentionally as signs, I shall consider as identical. For the sake of method, however, I shall treat the sign-making faculty as exhibited by man in the order of its probable evolution; and this means that I shall begin with the most natural, or least conventional, of the systems. This is the language of tone and gesture.
CHAPTER VI.
TONE AND GESTURE.
Tone and Gesture, considered as means of communication, may be dealt with simultaneously. For while it cannot be said that either historically or psychologically one is prior to the other, no more can it be said that in the earliest phases of their development one is more expressive than the other. All the more intelligent of the lower animals employ both; and the hissings, spittings, growlings, screamings, gruntings, cooings, &c., which in different species accompany as many different kinds of gesture, are assuredly not less expressive of the various kinds of feelings which are expressed. Again, in our own species, tone is quite as general, and, within certain limits, quite as expressive as gesture. Nay, even in fully developed speech, rational meaning is largely dependent for its conveyance upon slight differences of intonation. The five hundred words which go to constitute the Chinese language are raised to three times that number by the use of significant intonation; and even in the most highly developed languages shades of meaning admit of being rendered in this way which could not be rendered in any other.
Nevertheless, the language of tone, like the language of gesture, clearly lies nearer to, and is more immediately expressive of the logic of recepts, than is the language of articulation. This is easily proved by all the facts at our disposal. We know that an infant makes considerable advance in the language of tone and gesture before it begins to speak; and, according to Dr. Scott, who has had a large experience in the instruction of idiotic children, “those to whom there is no hope of teaching more than the merest rudiments of speech, are yet capable of receiving a considerable amount of knowledge by means of signs, and of expressing themselves by them.”[67] Lastly, among savages, it is notorious that tone, gesticulation, and grimace play a much larger part in conversation than they do among ourselves. Indeed, we have some, though not undisputed, evidence to show that in the case of many savages gesticulation is so far a necessary aid to articulation, that the latter without the former is but very imperfectly intelligible. For example, “those who, like the Arapahos, possess a very scanty vocabulary, pronounced in a quasi-intelligible way, can hardly converse with one another in the dark.”[68] And, as Mr. Tylor says, “the array of evidence in favour of the existence of tribes whose language is incomplete without the help of gesture-signs, even for things of ordinary import, is very remarkable.”[C] A fact which, as he very properly adds, “constitutes a telling argument in favour of the theory that the gesture-language is the original utterance of mankind [as it is ontogenetically in the individual man], out of which speech has developed itself more or less fully among different tribes.”[69]