for etymologic study.

From these and other considerations it is supposed that an analysis
of the original conceptions of gestures, studied together with the
holophrastic roots in the speech of the gesturers, may aid in the
ascertainment of some relation between concrete ideas and words.
Meaning does not adhere to the phonic presentation of thought, while
it does to signs. The latter are doubtless more flexible and in that
sense more mutable than words, but the ideas attached to them are
persistent, and therefore there is not much greater metamorphosis
in the signs than in the cognitions. The further a language has been
developed from its primordial roots, which have been twisted into
forms no longer suggesting any reason for their original selection,
and the more the primitive significance of its words has disappeared,
the fewer points of contact can it retain with signs. The higher
languages are more precise because the consciousness of the derivation
of most of their words is lost, so that they have become counters,
good for any sense agreed upon and for no other.

It is, however, possible to ascertain the included gesture even in
many English words. The class represented by the word _supercilious_
will occur to all readers, but one or two examples may be given not
so obvious and more immediately connected with the gestures of our
Indians. _Imbecile_, generally applied to the weakness of old age,
is derived from the Latin _in_, in the sense of on, and _bacillum_,
a staff, which at once recalls the Cheyenne sign for _old man_,
mentioned above, page 339. So _time_ appears more nearly connected
with [Greek: teino] to stretch, when information is given of the sign
for _long time_, in the Speech of Kin Ch[=e]-[)e]ss, in this paper,
viz., placing the thumbs and forefingers in such a position as if a
small thread was held between the thumb and forefinger of each hand,
the hands first touching each other, and then moving slowly from each
other, as if _stretching_ a piece of gum-elastic.

In the languages of North America, which have not become arbitrary to
the degree exhibited by those of civilized man, the connection between
the idea and the word is only less obvious than, that still unbroken
between the idea and the sign, and they remain strongly affected
by the concepts of outline, form, place, position, and feature on
which gesture is founded, while they are similar in their fertile
combination of radicals.

Indian