uous impressions. In the use of signs the
countenance and manner as well as the tenor decide whether objects
themselves are intended, or the forms, positions, qualities, and
motions of other objects which are suggested, and signs for moral
and intellectual ideas, founded on analogies, are common all over
the world as well as among deaf-mutes. Concepts of the intangible and
invisible are only learned through percepts of tangible and visible
objects, whether finally expressed to the eye or to the ear, in terms
of sight or of sound.

Sign language is so faithful to nature, and so essentially living in
its expression, that it is not probable that it will ever die. It may
become disused, but will revert. Its elements are ever natural and
universal, by recurring to which the less natural signs adopted
dialectically or for expedition can always, with, some circumlocution,
be explained. This power of interpreting itself is a peculiar
advantage, for spoken languages, unless explained by gestures or
indications, can only be interpreted by means of some other spoken
language. When highly cultivated, its rapidity on familiar subjects
exceeds that of speech and approaches to that of thought itself. This
statement may be startling to those who only notice that a selected
spoken word may convey in an instant a meaning for which the motions
of even an expert in signs may require a much longer time, but it must
be considered that oral speech is now wholly conventional, and that
with the similar development of sign language conventional expressions
with hands and body could be made more quickly than with the vocal
organs, because more organs could be worked at once. Without such
supposed development the habitual communication between deaf-mutes and
among Indians using signs is perhaps as rapid as between the ignorant
class of speakers upon the same subjects, and in many instances the
signs would win at a trial of speed. At the same time it must be
admitted that great increase in rapidity is chiefly obtained by the
system of preconcerted abbreviations, before explained, and by the
adoption of arbitrary forms, in which naturalness is sacrificed and
conventionality established, as has been the case with all spoken
languages in the degree in which they have become copious and
convenient.

There is another characteristic of the gesture speech that, though
it cannot be resorted to in the dark, nor where the attention of
the person addressed