§ 6. Conventional Element in GestureLanguage. — The theory that natural signs are psychologically the most primitive form of language has two advantages. The first of these is, that selfinterpreting signs arise naturally and spontaneously wherever there is any need for them. The second is, that they rapidly tend to become more or less conventional between members of the same community so as to pave the way for a system of purely arbitrary signs. The imitative gesture tends to become more or less conventional inasmuch as the understanding of it comes to depend, not merely on its own intrinsic value as a selfinterpreting sign, but also on its having been employed and understood before. On a first occasion, the sign may occur in circumstances or in a context which leave no doubt as to the meaning; on a subsequent occasion these circumstances or this special context may be absent, so that if the sign were then made for the first time, it would not be understood; nevertheless, it may be understood on the second occasion just because it had been understood on the first occasion. "The deaf and dumb teacher in the Berlin institute was named among the children by the action of cutting off the left arm with the edge of the right hand; the reason of this sign was not that there was anything peculiar about his arms, but that he came from Spandau, and it so happened that one of the children had been at Spandau and had seen there a man with one arm."* It is evident that this sign might come to be understood and used by members of the institution who knew nothing of its derivation.

One highly important way in which natural signs tend to become relatively conventional is through abbreviation. There is a strong disposition to abbreviate familiar gestures. The mere hint of a movement comes to be substituted for the movement itself. Colonel Mallery observed a Cheyenne Indian attempting to convey the idea of oldman. "He held his right hand forward bent at elbow, fingers and thumbs closed sidewise. This not conveying any sense, he found a long stick, bent his back, and supported his frame in a tottering step by the stick held as was before only imagined."*

* Tylor, Early History of Mankind.

By processes of this kind, those who employ gesturelanguage must become familiar with the possibility of a conventional arrangement for the expression of ideas. But the natural system never actually passes in this manner into a conventional system. Its formative principle remains all through essentially that of imitative representation. The deafmute and the Indian rarely lose sight altogether of the natural connexion between sign and signification. A bystander may be totally unable to detect the meaning of the signs used in conversation, owing to abridgment of natural pantomime. But the deafmute, or the savage, is able if required to act out in detail his abbreviated gesture. Natural signs may lead up to a conventional language, but they do not develop into one.

* Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology, vol. i., loc. cit.