Dryden says:—­

    “Pan taught to join with wax unequal reeds;
    Pan loves the shepherds and the flocks he feeds.”

“Pan,” says Servius, “is a rustic god, formed in similitude of Nature, whence he is called Pan, i.e., All:  for he has horns in similitude of the rays of the sun and the horns of the moon; his face is as ruddy as the imitation of the aether; he has a spotted fawn skin on his breast in likeness of the stars; his lower parts are shaggy on account of the trees, shrubs, and wild beasts; he has goat’s feet to denote the stability of the earth; he has a pipe of seven reeds on account of the harmony of the heavens, in which there are seven sounds; he has a crook, that is a curved staff, on account of the year, which runs back on itself because he is the god of all Nature.”

Bernardin de St. Pierre observes of Pantomime, “That it was the first language of man; it is known to all nations; and is so natural and so expressive that the children of white parents learn it rapidly when they see it used by the negroes.”

Of the Pantomimic language—­a universal language and common to the whole world from time immemorial—­Charles Darwin says in his “Descent of Man,” that “The intellectual and social faculties of man could hardly have been inferior in any extreme degree to those now possessed by the lowest savage; otherwise primeval man could not have been so eminently successful in the struggle for life as proved by his early and wide diffusion.  From the fundamental differences between certain languages some philologists have inferred that, when man first became widely diffused, he was not a speaking animal; but it may be suspected that languages, far less perfect than any now spoken, aided by gestures, might have been used, and yet have left no traces on subsequent and more highly-developed tongues.”

With the progress of, and also as an aid to, civilization how could the traveller or the trader, not only in the beginning of time, but also now, when occasion demands, in their intercourse with foreign nations (unless, of course, they know the language) make themselves understood, or be able to trade, unless they were or are able to use that “dumb silent language”—­Pantomime?  Civilization undoubtedly owes much of its progress to it, and, also the world at large, to this only and always universal language.  To both the deaf, as well as the dumb, its advantages have ever been apparent.

Therefore, from prehistoric times, and from the beginning of the world, we may presume to have had in some form or another, the Pantomimic Art.  In the lower stages of humanity, even in our own times, there is, in all probability, a close similarity to the savagedom of mankind in the early Antediluvian period as “This is shown (says Darwin) by the pleasure which they all take in dancing, rude music, painting, tattooing, and otherwise decorating themselves—­in their mutual comprehension of gesture language,