no necessary connection between mental acts and vocal utterances. The one thing necessary is, that thought, tending irresistibly toward expression under the impulse to communication, should find the means of intelligibly expressing itself. With the mental powers and social tendencies which men have, they would, even if unendowed with voice, have nevertheless put themselves in possession of language—language less perfect and manageable, to be sure, than is our present speech; but still, real language. Resort, doubtless, would first have been had to gesture: it is hardly less natural to men to use their hands than their tongues to help the communication of their ideas; the postures of the body, the movements of the face, can be made full of significance; the resources of pantomime are various and abundant, and constitute a means of expression often successfully employed, between those who are unacquainted with the conventional signs of one another's spoken language. Those human beings whose vocal powers are rendered useless by the deadness of their ears learn a pantomimic language which answers their needs, both of communication and of mental training, in no stinted measure. It has, indeed, its limitations and defects; but what it might be made, if it were the only means of communication attainable by men, and were elaborated by the consenting labour of generations, as spoken speech has been, we perhaps are slow to realize. I do not doubt that it might far exceed, both in wealth of resources and in distinct apprehensibility, many an existing spoken language, might ally itself with a mode of writing, and become an efficient means and aid of human progress. How easy a language of gestures is to acquire, and how natural to use, is clearly shown by the fact that the fully endowed children of the instructors in deaf-and-dumb asylums, brought up among those who employ both it and the spoken tongue, are accustomed to learn the former first, and to avail themselves of it in preference to the other, till long after the time when other children usually talk freely. It is past all reasonable question that, in the earliest communication between human beings, gesture long played a considerable, if not the principal, part, and that our race learned only by
