language, whose phrases will, in general, be understood only by translation into their vernacular language of gestures. We shall first endeavor to put this principle in a clearer point of view, and then enquire what system of signs representing words, is most eligible, for we are firmly persuaded that, on the choice of such a system depends the question, whether the deaf and dumb may be, in any reasonable space of time, inducted into a perfect knowledge of written language.

To those whose language was acquired through the ear, words, whether they utter, hear, read, or merely think of them, are, only variations of articulated sounds. Hence, most men find it difficult to appreciate correctly the peculiar circumstances of those, for whom this entire class of perceptions has no more existence than colors for a man born blind, and to whom, therefore, words in whatever manner they are presented, must belong to the class of visual, or that of tactile sensations. Whether in the case of a deaf mute who has been taught to articulate, the tactile sensations furnished by the contacts and motions of his own organs of speech constitute the material of words, or only recall the visible movements of those organs in another, or some other visible form of words, as in the case of the writer, those contacts and motions serving as representatives of sounds still remembered, though for many years unheard, is a question of much doubt. In either case, it is evident that to the deaf mute taught to articulate, words are very different from what they are to us. But there can be no doubt respecting the ordinary visible characters for words, whether composed of marks on paper, or of positions of the fingers. The one mode or the other may equally become to a deaf mute, the original forms of words, to which all other recognized forms of the same words will be referred. But in either case, words must be learned originally through the eye, and must therefore, ever belong to the class of visual perceptions.

Laura Bridgeman, the interesting pupil of the New England Asylum for the blind, presents the only instance in which we cannot doubt that words are conceived solely as tactile sensations. Other deaf mutes who, after acquiring some knowledge of words, had become blind, have indeed learned to recognize those words by the sense of touch; but the case just mentioned is believed to be the first in which an original knowledge of words has been acquired through this

sense.

The radical difference just explained, between the deaf mute's perceptions of words and those of men in general, must be steadily kept in view as the clue to many of the views and arguments presented in the following pages. It will also make it clear why the case of those who acquired a language before becoming deaf, differs from that of the deaf and dumb from birth. To the former, words are precisely what they are to other men, and though unheard for many years, their tones will still linger in the mind's ear, with all their variations of rhythm, cadence, accent, and emphasis. Such, as has already been intimated, is the case of the present writer, and he can therefore speak on that point from his own experience.

The mental habits of the deaf and dumb from birth, also differ from our own in another point, requiring explanation.

Metaphysicians recognize two modes of conducting mental operations. We may recall directly our original perceptions of objects, and of their relations whether in space or time: or we may recall them by means of signs standing some as the representatives of individual objects, but the greater number as the representatives of classes, of attributes, of states, of changes, of actions, of the relations of time and place, of cause and effect, of general principles.

The first is styled the method of direct intuition. It is the mode in which the mind of an uneducated mute recalls, compares, and combines at will the objects of his knowledge.

So long as the mind busies itself with the images of sensible objects, whether contemplated singly, or which is more common, as forming part of a group; so long as it follows, as in a camera obscura, the changes of place, color, attitude, relative position, etc., of objects, so long as it recalls directly its own simple emotions and judgments, by recalling objects or actions adapted to excite the former or exercise the latter, so long it may, and, in certain circumstances, does dispense with signs of any description in conducting its operations.

Even when a deaf mute has carried the pantomime, the natural language by which he communicates his ideas to others, to a considerable degree of perfection, he still thinks, for the most part, by the direct intuition of ideas;-because his pantomimic signs are either merely copies of the images in his own mind, as far as these are capable of being copied,

or abbreviations which suggest the entire image, in the same way in which the single letter N. suggests to us the word north, or the letters MS. the word manuscript. The order, too, of his pantomime follows the order of his perceptions, an order which, though strictly natural, appears inverted to those, accustomed to the order of words in most spoken languages. It is the characteristic of a language of pantomime to present groups of ideas at once,-or, when it becomes necessary to exhibit the parts of an outline or group in detail, the most prominent or essential must be presented first, that they may be more easily retained in the mind till, by adding the other parts in the order of their relative importance, the group is completed.

When practice has made this mode of communication familiar, it becomes unnecessary to trace more than a few of the most prominent outlines. The mind of the spectator supplies the rest in the same way in which, seeing a part of some familiar object, we know to what object it belongs. And this species of abbreviation may be extended to examples and metaphors used to illustrate ideas beyond the limits of the material world. The two words, fox and grapes, instantly recall the whole fable and its application to those to whom they are familiar, and the sign language of the deaf and dumb is composed, in great part, of similar abbreviations. But we are wandering from our present subject.

From what has been said, it is evident that the employment of such a language demands the direct intuition of ideas, both to execute and to comprehend the pantomime with facility. Hence it is, that deaf mutes are far more skilful in the use of this instrument of communication than those who, from the almost exclusive use of an artificial language, have acquired the opposite mental habit. And vice versa, the invincible predilection of all deaf mutes for their own language of pantomime very seriously obstructs their familiar acquisition of a language more universally intelligible among men, partly by making the use of the latter less frequent, but partly, also, by confirming habits of mind very unfavorable to the ready conception of such a language. Direct intuition, (including, of course, the actual contemplation of the image of the object in its presence, as well as of the same image recalled in the absence of the object,) must be, in the first instance, the foundation of all positive know

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ledge. It is the only mode in which the value of those signs can be determined which cannot be defined by other signs previously known, and therefore, the first conceptions, the first dawnings of observation and reflection in the mind of a child who hears, must be, equally with those of a deaf mute child, by the mode of direct intuition.

But, teach the child to represent objects and their qualities and relations, classes, and their generic or specific differences, actions and their modifications, by separate signs, signs, too, which the mind can, from their greater simplicity, grasp, arrange and combine more readily than it can the actual images of objects and actions ;-let him use such signs continually in acquiring and communicating ideas, and, though at first both the sign and the image will be present in the mind, yet the image will soon retire more and more in the back ground, while the sign will stand prominently forth. The case may, perhaps, be illustrated by comparing the sign to those labels in a cabinet of minerals, which often nearly conceal the specimen on which they are placed.

Let us further suppose that these signs become, in process of time, arranged in a customary order of collocation, very different from the natural order of ideas ;-that many of them come into use to denote general relations, as far beyond the limits of direct intuition, as the higher principles of geometry are beyond the simple truths called axioms;-that the mind is led by them into the boundless realms of abstract existences where intuition cannot follow;—and we can easily conceive that the presence of signs for ideas will become essential to the greater number of mental operations, and that so intimate a union will be formed between the idea and the sign by which it is most usually represented-the latter standing to the former in the relation of body to soul,-that the mind will become habituated to consider, not ideas directly, but the signs of those ideas.

When a system of signs for ideas either originally arbitrany, as in the case of spoken words, or become so by successive changes and abbreviations, as with the Chinese written characters, and with many of the signs used by the deaf and dumb,-has been carried to a high degree of cultivation and refinement, by the successive labors of a vast multitude of superior minds, and, especially, when the memory has been. stored with innumerable happy combinations of those signs,

in the form of proverbs, of passages from favorite authors, etc., the mental habit just referred to, assumes so much the character of an universal law, that we are hardly conscious of thinking at all unless we think by the aid of such signs. Hence some have denied that the deaf mute could think without a language to serve as the instrument of thought, and, thus, have most unjustly measured the extent of his ideas by the copiousness of his colloquial dialect. But, though we admit that the Atlantic cannot be crossed without a vessel, yet a practised swimmer will cross rivers which a man accustomed to rely on a boat, would think impassable without its assistance. And though the deaf mute who thinks by direct intuition, cannot attain to the same depth and reach of thought enjoyed by those who possess a more perfect mode of registering successive results and discoveries, he can, nevertheless, think and reason to a much greater extent than is commonly supposed.

Perhaps the most striking difference between the two mental habits under consideration is that, while the pantomimic signs of a deaf mute suggest but a very limited number of relations or associations, other than those obvious at first sight between the objects represented, -on the contrary, each sign in an artificial language brings with it a long train of associations, from the almost innumerable shades of meaning, both literal and metaphorical, of which each sign is susceptible, and the vast variety of combinations in which we have been accustomed to use it, or find it used. While the pantomimic signs, serving, as it were, as the object glass to a camera obscura, recall real images, a sign of the other class recalls not so much an image or outline, as some of the many associations with which we have been accustomed to connect that sign. It will be at once admitted that, to a blind man, the word eagle or lion cannot suggest the real image of those animals, but will nevertheless recall the ideas of their strength, courage, dominion over weaker animals, the soaring flight of the one, the kingly port of the other, and the innumerable historical and poetical associations founded on those qualities. There is a very large class of minds whose ordinary conceptions of words are very little different from those of the blind man. And indeed there are very many words which, though representing sensible objects, can hardly be connected with any particular images. Take, for example, such words as