With microcephalous idiots, who are so degraded that they never learn
to speak, one of them is described by Vogt,[20] as answering, when asked
whether he wished for more food or drink, by inclining or shaking his head.
Schmalz, in his remarkable dissertation on the education of the deaf
and dumb, as well as of children raised only one degree above idiotcy,
assumes that they can always both make and understand the common signs
of affirmation and negation."
Nevertheless if we look to the various races of man, these signs are
not so universally employed as I should have expected; yet they seem
too general to be ranked as altogether conventional or artificial.
My informants assert that both signs are used by the Malays,
by the natives of Ceylon, the Chinese, the negroes of the Guinea
coast, and, according to Gaika, by the Kafirs of South Africa,
though with these latter people Mrs. Barber has never seen a lateral
shake used as a negative. With respect to the Australians,
seven observers agree that a nod is given in affirmation; five agree
about a lateral shake in negation, accompanied or not by some word;
but Mr. Dyson Lacy has never seen this latter sign in Queensland,
and Mr.
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