Dr. TYLOR says (_Early History of Mankind_, 44): "We cannot lay down
as a rule that gesticulation decreases as civilization advances, and
say, for instance, that a Southern Frenchman, because his talk is
illustrated with gestures as a book with pictures, is less civilized
than a German or Englishman." This is true, and yet it is almost
impossible for persons not accustomed to gestures to observe them
without associating the idea of low culture. Thus in Mr. Darwin's
summing up of those characteristics of the natives of Tierra
del Fuego, which rendered it difficult to believe them to be
fellow-creatures, he classes their "violent gestures" with their
filthy and greasy skins, discordant voices, and hideous faces bedaubed
with paint. This description is quoted by the Duke of Argyle in his
_Unity of Nature_ in approval of those characteristics as evidence, of
the lowest condition of humanity.
Whether or not the power of the visible gesture relative to, and
its influence upon the words of modern oral speech are in inverse
proportion to the general culture, it seems established that they do
not bear that or any constant proportion to the development of the
several languages with which gesture is still more or less associated.
The statement has frequently been made that gesture is yet to some
highly-advanced languages a necessary modifying factor, and that
only when a language has become so artificial as to be completely
expressible in written signs--indeed, has been remodeled through their
long familiar use--can the bodily signs be wholly dispensed with. The
evidence for this statement is now doubted, and it is safer to
affirm that a common use of gesture depends more upon the sociologic
conditions of the speakers than upon the degree of copiousness of
their oral speech.