gestures manifestly of an opposite nature to those by which certain
feelings are already expressed, should at first have been voluntarily
employed under the influence of an opposite state of feeling. The fact
of the gestures being now innate, would be no valid objection to the
belief that they were at first intentional; for if practised during
many generations, they would probably at last be inherited.
Nevertheless it is more than doubtful, as we shall immediately see,
whether any of the cases which come under our present head of
antithesis, have thus originated.
With conventional signs which are not innate, such as those used by the
deaf and dumb and by savages, the principle of opposition or antithesis
has been partially brought into play. The Cistercian monks thought it
sinful to speak, and as they could not avoid holding some
communication, they invented a gesture language, in which the principle
of opposition seems to have been employed.[202] Dr. Scott, of the
Exeter Deaf and Dumb Institution, writes to me that opposites are
greatly used in teaching the deaf and dumb, who have a lively sense of
them. Nevertheless I have been surprised how few unequivocal instances
can be adduced. This depends partly on all the signs having commonly
had some natural origin; and partly on the practice of the deaf and
dumb and of savages to contract their signs as much as possible for the
sake of rapidity.[203] Hence their natural source or origin often
becomes doubtful or is completely lost; as is likewise the case with
articulate language.
Many signs, moreover, which plainly stand in opposition to each other,
appear to have had on both sides a significant origin. This seems to
hold good with the signs used by the deal and dumb for light and
darkness, for strength and weakness, &c. In a future chapter I shall
endeavour to show that the opposite gestures of affirmation and
negation, namely, vertically nodding and laterally shaking the head,
have both probably had a natural beginning. The waving of the hand from
right to left, which is used as a negative by some savages, may have
been invented in imitation of shaking the head; but whether the
opposite movement of waving the hand in a straight line from the face,
which is used in affirmation, has arisen through antithesis or in some
quite distinct manner, is doubtful.
If we now turn to the gestures which are innate or common to all the
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