ABSTRACT
Spirit comprehends itself and its opposition to the “objective” world only in that it brings certain differences situated in itself into phenomena as differences of consideration and, as it were, injecting them into phenomena. In the psychological theory of gesture language, it is customary to distinguish two main types of gestures. Of course, the assessment of gesture language would seem to develop differently, if the people start not from the consideration of indicating gestures but from the second fundamental class, from the class of imitating gestures. The gesture languages of cultural peoples contain, in addition to the immediate-sensible, imitative signs, an abundance of so-called symbolic gestures, which do not directly picture the object or activity to be expressed but designate it only indirectly. Thus, for example, it is reported that in the gesture language of the North American Indians, only a few gestures are "conventional" in origin: the vast majority, rather, consist in the simple reproduction of patent natural phenomena.
