UNINSTRUCTED DEAF-MUTES.

The signs made by congenital and uninstructed deaf-mutes to be now considered are either strictly natural signs, invented by themselves, or those of a colloquial character used by such mutes where associated.  The accidental or merely suggestive signs peculiar to families, one member of which happens to be a mute, are too much affected by the other members of the family to be of certain value.  Those, again, which are taught in institutions have become conventional and designedly adapted to translation into oral speech, although founded by the abbe de l’Epee, followed by the abbe Sicard, in the natural signs first above mentioned.

A great change has doubtless occurred in the estimation of congenital deaf-mutes since the Justinian Code, which consigned them forever to legal infancy, as incapable of intelligence, and classed them with the insane.  Yet most modern writers, for instance Archbishop Whately and Max Mueller, have declared that deaf-mutes could not think until after having been instructed.  It cannot be denied that the deaf-mute thinks after his instruction either in the ordinary gesture signs or in the finger alphabet, or more lately in artificial speech.  By this instruction he has become master of a highly-developed language, such as English or French, which he can read, write, and actually talk, but that foreign language he has obtained through the medium of signs.  This is a conclusive proof that signs constitute a real language and one which admits of thought, for no one can learn a foreign language unless he had some language of his own, whether by descent or acquisition, by which it could be translated, and such translation into the new language could not even be commenced unless the mind had been already in action and intelligently using the original language for that purpose.  In fact the use by deaf-mutes of signs originating in themselves exhibits a creative action of mind and innate faculty of expression beyond that of ordinary speakers who acquired language without conscious effort.  The thanks of students, both of philology and psychology, are due to Prof.  Samuel Porter, of the National Deaf Mute College, for his response to the question, “Is thought possible without language?” published in the Princeton Review for January, 1880.

With regard to the sounds uttered by deaf-mutes, the same explanation of heredity may be made as above, regarding the words invented by young children.  Congenital deaf-mutes at first make the same sounds as hearing children of the same age, and, often being susceptible to vibrations of the air, are not suspected of being deaf.  When that affliction is ascertained to exist, all oral utterances from the deaf-mute are habitually repressed by the parents.

GESTURES OF THE BLIND.