Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

In support of the same general conclusions I may here also quote the following excellent remarks from Colonel Mallery’s laborious work on Gesture-language:—[70]

“The wishes and emotions of very young children are conveyed in a small number of sounds, but in a great variety of gestures and facial expressions. A child’s gestures are intelligent long in advance of speech; although very early and persistent attempts are made to give it instruction in the latter but none in the former, from the time when it begins risu cognoscere matrem. It learns words only as they are taught, and learns them through the medium of signs which are not expressly taught. Long after familiarity with speech, it consults the gestures and facial expressions of its parents and nurses, as if seeking thus to translate or explain their words. These facts are important in reference to the biologic law that the order of development of the individual is the same as that of the species.... The insane understand and obey gestures when they have no knowledge whatever of words. It is also found that semi-idiotic children who cannot be taught more than the merest rudiments of speech can receive a considerable amount of information through signs, and can express themselves by them. Sufferers from aphasia continue to use appropriate gestures. A stammerer, too, works his arms and features as if determined to get his thoughts out, in a manner not only suggestive of the physical struggle, but of the use of gestures as a hereditary expedient.”

Words, then, in so far as they are not intentionally imitative of other sounds, and so approximate to gestures, are essentially more conventional than are tones immediately expressive of emotions, or bodily actions which appeal to the eye, and which, in so far as they are intentionally significant, are made, as far as possible, intentionally pictorial. Therefore, either to make or to understand these more conventional signs requires a higher order of mental evolution; and on this account it is that we everywhere find the language of tone and gesture preceding that of articulate speech, as at once the more simple, more natural, and therefore more primitive means of conveying receptual ideas.

We find the same general truth exemplified in the fact that the language of tone and gesture is always resorted to by men who do not understand each others’ articulate speech; and although among the races in which gesture-language has been carried to its highest degree of elaboration most of the signs employed have become more or less conventional, in the main they are still pictorial. This is directly proved, without the need of special analysis, by the fact that the members of such races are able to communicate with one another in a manner so singularly complete that to an onlooker the result seems almost magical.

Thus “the Indians who have been shown over the civilized East have often succeeded in holding intercourse by means of their invention and application of principles, in what may be called the voiceless mother utterance, with white deaf-mutes, who surely have no semiotic code more nearly connected with that attributed to the Indians than is derived from their common humanity. They showed the greatest pleasure in meeting deaf-mutes, precisely as travellers in a foreign country are rejoiced to meet persons speaking their language.”[71]

Again, Tylor says, “Gesture-language is substantially the same all the world over,” and Mallery confirms this by the remark that “the writer’s study not only sustains it, but shows a surprising number of signs for the same idea which are substantially identical, not only among savage tribes, but among all peoples that use gesture-signs with any freedom. Men, in groping for a mode of communication with each other, and using the same general methods, have been under many varying conditions and circumstances which have determined differently many conceptions and their semiotic execution, but there have also been many of both which were similar.”

Such being the case, it is a matter of interest to determine the syntax of this language; for we may be sure that by so doing we are at work upon the root-principles of the sign-making faculty where it arises out of the logic of recepts, and not upon the developed ramifications of this faculty where we find it wrought up into the more highly conventional logic of concepts characteristic of speech. But before I enter upon this branch of our subject, I shall say a few words to show to what a high degree of perfection gesture-language admits of being developed.

Tylor observes:—“As a means of communication, there is no doubt that the Indian pantomime is not merely capable of expressing a few simple and ordinary notions, but that to the uncultured savage, with his few and material ideas, it is a very fair substitute for his scanty vocabulary.”[72] And Colonel Mallery, in the admirable treatise already referred to, shows in detail to what a surprising extent this “Indian pantomime” is thus available as a substitute for speech. The following may be selected from among the numerous dialogues and discourses which he gives, and which all present the same general character. It is communicated by Mr. Ivan Pehoff, who took notes of the conversation at the time. The two conversers were Indians of different tribes.

“(1) Kenaitze.—Left hand raised to height of eye, palm outward, moved several times from right to left rapidly; fingers extended and closed; pointing to strangers with left hand. Right hand describes a curve from north to east.—‘Which of the north-eastern tribes is yours?’