688 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1909. 
senses are explained to him, he will not remain behind other children 
of his age. Later, when he becomes a man, conversations with per- 
sons around him draw him constantly away from himself as if they 
were spectacles, prevent his thought from becoming isolated, turned 
upon himself, or confined like a silkworm in its cocoon. Montaigne, 
who understood this, said, “ I should rather lose my sight than my 
hearing;” and he doubtless said this because he enjoyed conversa- 
tion more than any other pleasure. But this inquiring spirit, always 
in search of new ideas, and who found so much delight in the free 
play of the intellect, well understood that the ear feeds and stimu- 
lates our thought more than the eye. He found that conversation 
was the most fruitful of exercises. Is it paradoxical to think that 
the sense of hearing is a sense more intellectual, in a way, than sight ? 
I do not believe so. The eye, after all is said, furnishes the mind only 
with images of external objects, the ear carries ideas to it—all the 
work of reflection which thought ingrafts on these objects. It is 
‘hearing which serves as a real bond between minds. In manual 
work a deaf person who can see is superior to a blind person, but 
from the intellectual point of view I am convinced that the position 
of the blind man who hears is preferable to this deaf man. 
The sense of touch has been explored methodically by the blind 
for scarcely more than a century and a quarter. Valentin Hatiy 
in 1784 established the first special school for their use, and it is this 
methodical utilization which has transformed their condition and 
permits them to-day to assume their role in society. The education 
of touch is the essential part of that which may be called the special 
pedagogy of the blind. It is reclaimed and domesticated in such a 
way as to make it fill the offices abandoned by sight, and this sub- 
stitution is very important as regards intellectual development. In 
all times it has been touch alone which has given to the blind the 
notions of form, resistance, etc., from which are constructed those 
ideas of the external world, which sight conjointly with touch gives 
to those who can see. Spontaneously and without the need of study 
it has entered the ordinary domain of sight and brought to the mind 
of the blind the knowledge of objects which, in general, are beyond 
its reach. The ®@fforts of the educators consist at first in systematically 
developing this tendency. It is necessary to cause a blind person to 
touch as many objects as possible, and to feel as often as possible the 
objects which men know ordinarily from sight, such as large animals, 
implements of all kinds, and the ike. As far as possible objects of 
the natural size are placed in his hands. In their absence one has 
to be content with miniatures. Thus, for poor representations, always 
abbreviated, and often reduced practically to a single word, are sub- 
stituted concrete and precise images. Lessons on objects are for the 
blind child a prime necessity. 
