threaten, and the fist shaken in defiance. The brow is contracted with
displeasure, and the eyes winked to show connivance. The shoulders
are shrugged to express disbelief or repugnance, the eyebrows
elevated with surprise, the lips bitten in vexation and thrust out in
sullenness or displeasure, while a higher degree of anger is shown
by a stamp of the foot. Quintilian, regarding the subject, however,
not as involuntary exhibition of feeling and intellect, but for
illustration and enforcement, becomes eloquent on the variety of
motions of which the hands alone are capable, as follows:

"The action of the other parts of the body assists the speaker, but
the hands (I could almost say) speak themselves. By them do we
not demand, promise, call, dismiss, threaten, supplicate, express
abhorrence and terror, question and deny? Do we not by them express
joy and sorrow, doubt, confession, repentance, measure, quantity,
number, and time? Do they not also encourage, supplicate, restrain,
convict, admire, respect? and in pointing out places and persons do
they not discharge the office of adverbs and of pronouns?"

Voss adopts almost the words of Quintilian, "_Manus non modo loquentem
adjuvant, sed ipsæ pene loqui videntur_," while Cresollius calls the
hand "the minister of reason and wisdom ... without it there is no
eloquence."



_INVOLUNTARY RESPONSE TO GESTURES._

Further evidence of the unconscious survival of gesture language is
afforded by the ready and involuntary response made in signs to signs