the same object or idea, observed either among several individuals of the same tribe or among different tribes, is made to represent those signs, they are all mutilated and ignored as distinctive signs, though the result may possibly be made intelligible in practice, according to principles mentioned in the present paper.  The expedient of a “mean” may be practically useful in the formation of a mere interpreter’s jargon, but it elucidates no principle.  It is also convenient for any one determined to argue for the uniformity of sign language as against the variety in unity apparent in all the realms of nature.  On the “mean” principle, he only needs to take his two-foot rule and arithmetical tables and make all signs his signs and his signs all signs.  Of course they are uniform, because he has made them so after the brutal example of Procrustes.

In this connection it is proper to urge a warning that a mere sign talker is often a bad authority upon principles and theories.  He may not be liable to the satirical compliment of Dickens’s “brave courier,” who “understood all languages indifferently ill”; but many men speak some one language fluently, and yet are wholly unable to explain or analyze its words and forms so as to teach it to another person, or even to give an intelligent summary or classification of their own knowledge.  What such a sign talker has learned is by memorizing, as a child may learn English, and though both the sign talker and the child may be able to give some separate items useful to a philologist or foreigner, such items are spoiled when colored by the attempt of ignorance to theorize.  A German who has studied English to thorough mastery, except in the mere facility of speech, may in a discussion upon some of its principles be contradicted by any mere English speaker, who insists upon his superior knowledge because he actually speaks the language and his antagonist does not, but the student will probably be correct and the talker wrong.  It is an old adage about oral speech that a man who understands but one language understands none.  The science of a sign talker possessed by a restrictive theory is like that of Mirabeau, who was greater as an orator than as a philologist, and who on a visit to England gravely argued that there was something seriously wrong in the British mind because the people would persist in saying “give me some bread” instead of “donnez-moi du pain,” which was so much easier and more natural.  A designedly ludicrous instance to the same effect was Hood’s arraignment of the French because they called their mothers “mares” and their daughters “fillies.”  It is necessary to take with caution any statement from a person who, having memorized or hashed up any number of signs, large or small, has decided in his conceit that those he uses are the only genuine Simon Pure, to be exclusively employed according to his direction, all others being counterfeits or blunders.  His vocabulary has