"Run I finished, go to sleep," means, "When I had finished running, I went to sleep." "Money, you?" means, "Have you money?" One of the most interesting sights I know of, in a psychological and physiological point of view, is a conversation in gesture and pantomime between two or three children born totally deaf, who do not know that they are observed. I am indebted to Director Oehlwein, of Weimar, for the opportunity of such observations, as also for the above questions and answers. Especially those children (of about seven years) not yet instructed in articulation employ an astonishing number of looks and gestures, following one upon another with great rapidity, in order to effect an understanding with one another. They understand one another very easily, but, because their gestures, and particularly their excessively subtilized play of feature, do not appear in ordinary life, these children are just as hard to understand for the uninitiated as are men who speak a wholly foreign language without any gestures. Even the eye of the deaf-mute has a different expression from that of the person who talks. The look seems more "interested," and manifestly far fewer unnecessary movements of the eyes and contractions of the facial muscles are made by the deaf-mute than by the child of the same age who has his hearing. Further, deaf-mutes, even those of small ability, imitate all sorts of movements that are plainly visible much better, in general, than do persons with all their senses. I made, in presence of the children, several not very easy crossings of the fingers, put my hands in different positions, and the like--movements that they could not ever have seen--and I was surprised that some of the children at once made them deftly, whereas ordinary children, first consider a long time, and then imitate clumsily. It is doubtless this exaltation of the imitative functions in deaf-mute children which makes it appear as if they themselves invented their gestures (see above, p. 23). Certainly they do not get their first signs through "any one's suggestion," they form them for themselves, but, so far as I see, only through imitation and the hereditary expressive movements. The signs are in great part themselves unabridged imitations. The agreement, or "convention," which many teachers of deaf-mutes assume, and which would introduce an entirely causeless, not to say mysterious, principle, consists in this, that all deaf-mutes in the beginning imitate the same thing in the same way. Thus, through this perfectly natural accord of all, it comes to pass that they understand one another. When they have gained ideas, then they combine the separate signs in manifold ways, as one who speaks combines words, in order to express new ideas; they become thereby more and more difficult to be understood, and often are only with difficulty understood even among themselves; and they are able only in very limited degree to form concepts of a higher order.