old, was deaf and dumb, blind, and even without the sense of taste, so that the sense of touch was all that remained.  By persevering and tender instruction, she attained to an intellectual condition which was relatively high.  A careful study of her case showed that she had been altogether without intuitive knowledge of causes, of the absolute, and of God.  Howe doubts whether she had any idea of space and time, but this was not absolutely proved, since as far as distance was concerned, she seemed to estimate it, by muscular sensation.  Everything showed that she thought in images.  Although without any sensation of light or sound, she made certain noises in her throat to indicate different people when she was conscious of their presence or when she thought of them, so that she was naturally impelled to express every thought or sensation, not externally perceived, by a sign; and this shows the tendency of every idea and image towards an extrinsic form.  She often conversed with herself, generally making signs with one hand and replying with the other.  It was evident that a muscular sign or the motion of the fingers was substituted for the phonetic signs of speech, and in this way ideas and images received their necessarily extrinsic form.  The image was embodied in a muscular act and motion, and in this way thought had its concrete representation.  The same results would, as far as we know, be obtained from others in the same unhappy conditions as Laura Bridgman.

It is therefore clear that primitive language was only a vocal and individual sign of material images, and it was for a long while restricted to these concrete limits.  Since the vocal signs of the relations of things are less easily expressed, these relations were at first set forth by gestures, by a movement of the whole person, and especially of the hands and face.  This preliminary action is helped by the imitative faculty with which children and uncultured peoples are more especially endowed, of which we have also instances in the higher animals nearest to man.  The negroes imitate the gestures, clothing, and customs of white men in the most extraordinary and grotesque manner, and so do the natives of New Zealand.  The Kamschatkans have a great power of imitating other men and animals, and this is also the case with the inhabitants of Vancouver.  Herndon was astonished by the mimic arts of the Brazilian Indians, and Wilkes made the same observation on the Patagonians.  This faculty is still more apparent in the lower races.  Many travellers have spoken of the extraordinary tendency to imitation among the Fuegians; and, according to Monat, the Andaman islanders are not less disposed to mimicry and imitation.  Mitchell states that the Australians possess the same power.

This fact also applies to the languages of extremely rude and savage peoples.  Some American Indians, for instance, help out their sentences and make them intelligible by contortion of their features and other gesticulations, and the same observation was made by Schweinwurth of an African tribe.  The language of the Bosjesmanns requires so many signs to make the meaning of their words intelligible that it cannot be understood in the dark.  These facts partly explain the natural genesis of human languages.