he Persian "_bulbul_," the "_jugjug_" of Gascoigne, and the
"_whitwhit_" of others are all attempts at imitating the note of the
nightingale. Successful signs must have a much closer analogy and
establish, a _consensus_ between the talkers far beyond that produced
by the mere sound of words.

Gestures, in the degree of their pantomimic character, excel in
graphic and dramatic effect applied to narrative and to rhetorical
exhibition, and beyond any other mode of description give the force
of reality. Speech, when highly cultivated, is better adapted to
generalization and abstraction; therefore to logic and metaphysics.
The latter must ever henceforth, be the superior in formulating
thoughts. Some of the enthusiasts in signs have contended that this
unfavorable distinction is not from any inherent incapability, but
because their employment has not been continued unto perfection,
and that if they had been elaborated by the secular labor devoted
to spoken language they might in resources and distinctiveness have
exceeded many forms of the latter. Gallaudet, Peet, and others maybe
right in asserting that man could by his arms, hands, and fingers,
with facial and bodily accentuation, express any idea that could be
conveyed by words.

The combinations which can be made with corporeal signs are infinite.
It has been before argued that a high degree of culture might have
been attained by man without articulate speech and it is but a further
step in the reasoning to conclude that if articulate speech had not
been possessed or acquired, necessity would have developed gesture
language to a degree far beyond any known exhibition of it. The
continually advancing civilization and continually increasing
intercourse of countless ages has perfected oral speech, and as both,
civilization and intercourse were possible with signs alone it is
to be supposed that they would have advanced in some corresponding
manner. But as sign language has been chiefly used during historic
time either as a scaffolding around a more valuable structure to
be thrown aside when the latter was completed, or as an occasional
substitute, such development was not to be expected.

The process of forming signs to express abstract ideas is only a
variant from that of oral speech, in which the words for the most
abstract ideas, such as law, virtue, infinitude, and immortality,
are shown by Max Mueller to have been derived and deduced, that
is, abstracted, from sens