204 STUDIES IN LIFE AND SENSE. 



result in images of things seen, or in sensations of things heard ; 

 and as brain-force or mind appreciates in this case, so does the same 

 force, when stimulated in another direction, become transformed 

 into the audible ideas whereby we know ourselves, and become 

 known of others. "We should be quite as much warranted," says 

 Dr. Maudsley, "in assigning to the mind a special faculty of writing, 

 of walking, or of gesticulating, as in speaking of a special faculty of 

 speech in it." 



Mr. Darwin has been careful to point out that the relation exist- 

 ing between " the continued use of language and the development 

 of the brain " has formed an important factor in strengthening and 

 perfecting the power of speech. An increase of brain-power would 

 act favourably upon the use of words and ideas, and the practice of 

 speech, at first rude and imperfect, would react upon the brain in 

 turn. Trains of thought in ordinary life may be unaccompanied by 

 any outward manifestations or by words, it is true ; but the person 

 who, during a reverie, suddenly breaks out into speech, illustrates in 

 a very apt fashion the idea that the earliest attempts to frame word- 

 concepts of things must have originated in outspoken sounds ac- 

 companying the muscular actions and the vivid ideas which were 

 just struggling into existence. But the history of deaf mutes affords 

 much valuable evidence and many important hints regarding the 

 primitive condition of the language of mankind. Persons born deaf 

 are, as is well known, also dumb. A want of hearing prevents the 

 formation of concepts or impressions of distinct vocal sounds. The 

 case of neglected deaf mutes illustrates this fact ; for those un- 

 fortunates are as completely isolated from their fellow human beings 

 as are lower animals from man, and their minds, in respect of the 

 primitive nature of their ideas, may be held to represent the original 

 mental states of early mankind. When, on the other hand, such 

 persons are trained to speak, they evince in the course of their 

 education a series of advances which unquestionably bear some 

 analogy to the progress of man in the art of speech. What may be 

 said to be the condition of the mind in the deaf mute, isolated by 

 his infirmities from his fellows in the most complete manner, and 

 debarred from participating in those social or gregarious tendencies 

 which, as we have remarked, count for so much in the theoretical 

 understanding of the beginnings of language? These persons, in 

 thinking, use no abstract conceptions save of the very simplest 

 order. To use Mr. G. J. Romanes's description of the experiences of 

 an educated deaf mute, such persons think in pictures so concrete 

 are their notions of the outer world. Abstract ideas, such as those 

 of God and heaven, are entirely absent. Religion, in the absence of 

 language, is also non-existent One deaf mute told his teacher that 

 prior to his education he supposed the Bible to have been printed in 



