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knowledge and morality and civilization have gained some influence over him; and he will then be in a condition to receive and assimilate whatever there is of goodness and truth in the religion of his teacher.

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Unfortunately, the practices of European settlers are too often so diametrically opposed to the precepts of Christianity, and so deficient in humanity, justice, and charity, that the poor savage must be sorely puzzled to understand why this new faith, which is to do him so much good, should have had so little effect on his teacher's own countrymen. The white men in our Colonies are too frequently the true savages, and require to be taught and Christianized quite as much as the natives. We have heard, on good authority, that in Australia a man has been known to prove the goodness of a rifle he wanted to sell, by shooting a child from the back of a native woman who passing was distance; some another, when the policy of shooting all natives who came near a station was discussed, advocated his own plan of putting poisoned food in their way, as much less troublesome and more effectual. Incredible though such things seem, we can believe that they not unfrequently occur wherever the European comes in contact with the savage man, for human nature changes little with times and places; and I have myself heard a Brazilian friar boast, with much complacency, of having saved the Government the expense of a war with a hostile tribe of Indians, by the simple expedient of placing in their way clothing infected with the smallpox, which disease soon nearly exterminated them. Facts, perhaps less horrible, but equally indicative of lawlessness and inhumanity, may be heard of in all our Colonies; and recent events in Japan and in New Zealand show a determination to pursue our own ends, with very little regard for the rights, or desire for the improvement, of the natives. The savage may well wonder at our inconsistency in pressing upon him a religion which has so signally failed to improve our own moral character, as he too acutely feels in the treatment he receives from Christians. It seems desirable, therefore, that our Missionary Societies should endeavour to exhibit

VOL. II.

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to their proposed converts some more favourable specimens of the effect of their teaching. It might be well to devote a portion of the funds of such societies to the establishment of model communities, adapted to show the benefits of the civilization we wish to introduce, and to serve as a visible illustration of the effects of Christianity on its professors. The general practice of Christian virtues by the Europeans around them would, we feel assured, be a most powerful instrument for the general improvement of savage races, and is, perhaps, the only mode of teaching that would produce a real and lasting

effect.

CHAPTER VII

THE EXPRESSIVENESS OF SPEECH; OR, MOUTH-GESTURE AS A FACTOR IN THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE

THE science of language, as treated by its modern students and professors, is so largely devoted to tracing the affinities and the laws of growth and modification of existing and recently extinct languages, that some of the essential characteristics of human speech have been obscured, and the features that contribute largely to its inherent intelligibility overlooked. Philologists have discovered, as the result of long and laborious research, what they hold to be the roots or fundamental units of each of the great families of language; but these roots themselves are supposed to be for the most part conventional, or, if they had in the very beginning of language any natural meaning, this is held to have been so obscured by successive changes of form and structure as to be now usually undiscoverable. As regards a considerable number of the words which occur under various forms in a variety of languages, and which seem to have a common root, this latter statement may be true, but it is by no means always, and perhaps not even generally, true. In our own language, and probably in all others, a considerable number of the most familiar words are so constructed as to proclaim their meaning more or less distinctly, sometimes by means of imitative sounds, but also, in a large number of cases, by the shape or the movements of the various parts of the mouth used in pronouncing them, and by peculiarities in breathing or in vocalisation, which may express a meaning quite independent of mere sound-imitation.

These naturally expressive words are very often represented by closely allied forms in some of the Teutonic, Celtic, or other Aryan languages, and they have thus every appearance of constituting a remnant of that original imitative or expressive speech, the essential features of which have undergone little change, although the exact form of the words may have been continually modified. But even when it can be shown that a word which is now strikingly suggestive of its meaning has been derived from some other words which are less, or not at all, suggestive of the same idea, or which even refer to some totally different idea, the obvious conclusion will be that, even in the present day, there is so powerful a tendency to bring sound and sense into unison, as to render it in the highest fundamental degree probable that have here we principle which has always been at work, both in the origin and in the successive modifications of human speech.

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Many writers have discussed the interjectional and imitative origin of language--especially, in this country, Dean Farrar and Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood-but neither in their volumes, nor in any other English work with which I am acquainted, is the subject elaborated with any approach to completeness, while many of its. most important features appear to have been overlooked. One of the most celebrated philological scholars and writers has treated it with extreme contempt, and has christened it the "Bow-wow and Pooh-pooh theory;" and, perhaps in consequence of this contempt, its advocates often adopt an apologetic tone, and, while urging the correctness of the principle, are prepared to admit that its application is very limited, and that it can only be used to explain a very small portion of any language. This is, no doubt, true, if we go no further than the ordinary classes of interjectional and imitative words the Oh! of astonishment, the Ah! and Ugh! of pain, the infantile Ba, Pa, and Ma, as the origin of father and mother terms, and the direct imitation of animal or human sounds, as in cuckoo, mew, whinny, sneeze, snore, and many others, together with the various words that may be derived from them. But this is merely the beginning and rudiment of a much wider subject, and gives us no adequate conception of the range and interest of the great principle of speech-expression, as exhibited both in the varied forms of indirect imitation, but more especially by what may be termed speech or mouth-gesture. During my long residence among many savage or barbarous people I first observed some of these mouth-gestures, and have been thereby led to detect a mode of natural expression by words which is, I believe, to a large extent new, and which opens up a much wider range of expressiveness in speech than has hitherto been possible, giving us a clue to the natural meaning of whole classes of words which are usually supposed to be purely conventional.

Mouth-gestures.

My attention was first directed to this subject by noticing that, when Malays were talking together, they often indicated direction by pouting out their lips. They would do this either silently, referring to something already spoken or understood, but more frequently when saying disána (there) or itu (that), thus avoiding any further explanation of what was meant. At the time, I did not see the important bearing of this gesture; but many years afterwards, when paying some attention to the imitative origin of language, it occurred to me that while pronouncing the words in question, impressively, the mouth would be opened and the lips naturally protruded, while the same thing would occur with our corresponding English words there and that; and when I saw further that the French and cela, and the German da and das, had a similar open-mouthed pronunciation, it seemed probable that an important principle was involved.1

The next step was made on meeting with the statement, that there was no apparent reason why the word go should

1 The botanical explorer, Martius, describes lip-pointing as used by certain Brazilian tribes, but he does not seem to have connected it with the character of the word accompanying the gesture, or to have drawn any conclusions from it.

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