391 



DACTYLOLOGY. 



DACTYLOLOGY. 



fingers, and that, by acquiring the manual alphabet, they can com- 

 municate with them. Such persons should bear in mind that the 

 deaf are shut out from all spoken languages ; that before they can use 

 or understand a written or spoken language, they must learn it ; and 

 that such an acquirement is made, under their disadvantages, by a very 

 slow process. To the deaf and dumb under instruction, dactylology is 

 useful as a means of communication between them and their teacher; 

 at first, in such select language as the pupil understands, or as may be 

 readily explained by mimic signs or other auxiliaries. As the pupil 

 advances in the knowledge of words and their collocations, this mode of 

 communication becomes more satisfactory, and at length he can use it 

 to converse on all ordinary subjects with the accuracy of writing and 

 with much greater rapidity. 



Dege'rando has clearly and fully explained the use and value of this 

 very simple art. (' De 1'Education des Sourds-Muets,' Paris, 1827.) 

 He says dactylology is to alphabetic writing what that is to speech. 

 Formed upon writing as its model, it represents it precisely as writing 

 represents words. But in this connection between dactylology and 

 writing, the reciprocal utility of the two orders of proceeding is at the 

 same time the reverse of what we have remarked in the connection 

 between writing and speech. In fact, the office of dactylology consists 

 in giving to writing that moveableness which speech enjoys, and which 

 the first loses in the fixedness of depicted characters. Dactylology is 

 writing set free from ita material dress, and from those conditions 

 necessary for the employment of the pen or pencil ; it carries with 

 itself these instruments ; it is thus ready in all familiar conversations ; 

 it affords help at all times and in all places. It is thus that dactylology 

 is little more than a toy for those who already possess, in speech, a 

 means of communication more easy and more appropriate to all circum- 

 stances. It is thus also that it becomes an essential resource to those 

 who are deprived of speech, to whom it renders a portion of those 

 advantages, supplying for them writing, and giving it in some manner 

 a new extension. However, dactylology is far from affording all the 

 advantages of speech, while it loses a portion of those which are 

 peculiar to the privilege of writing. On the one hand it is much less 

 rapid than speech ; it is unfurnished with that expression which 

 belongs to the human voice of that infinite diversity which the soul 

 finds within for pourtraying all the sentiments which affect it ; it has 

 nothing of that harmony, that secret charm, that power of imitation of 

 which speech is so capable ; its employment, besides, obliges the sus- 

 pension of all business and all action. On the other hand, it has none 

 of that durability which renders writing so favourable to the operations 

 of reflection ; it is not able to exhibit its signs but after a successive 

 manner ; it cannot preserve in composing, as writing does, those vast 

 pictures which the inventive faculty embraces simultaneously, and sub- 

 sequently surveys, in every sense, with perfect liberty. Dactylology 

 shares in some of the inconveniences of speech, and in some of those 

 of writing ; it is as fugitive as the first, it is as complicated in its 

 forms as the second. (Vol. i., pp. 259, 60.) 



The manual alphabet has been employed as a medium of intercourse 

 between the deaf and dumb, and blind persons ; it is also commonly 

 used by the former when they have to converse in the dark. As the 

 art addresses itself to the sense of touch, as well as to that of sight, it 

 is easy to touch another person's hands, who is acquainted with the 

 hand alphabet, in such parts or positions as to enable him to read the 

 words or sentences thus conveyed. Bulwer, one of the earliest writers 

 on the instruction of the deaf [BtTLWEB, in Bioo. Div.], was fully 

 aware of the advantage of manual alphabets in their instruction ; and 

 it seems strange that he did not invent one, or ascertain and make 

 known the merits of one, of which he thus writes : 



" A pregnant example, of the officious nature of the touch, in supply- 

 ing the defect or temporall incapacity of other senses, we have in one 

 Master Babington, of Burntwood, in the county of Essex, an ingenious 

 gentleman, who, through some sicknesse, becoming deaf, doth, not- 

 withstanding, feele words, and, as if he had an eye in his finger, sees 

 signes in the dark ; whose wife discourseth very perfectly with him by 

 a strange way of arthrologie, or alphabet contrived on the joynts of his 

 fingers ; who, taking him by the hand in the night, can so discourse 

 with him very exactly; for he feeling the joynts which she toucheth 

 for letters, by them collected into words, very readily conceives what 

 she would suggest to him." (' Chirologia, or the Natural Language of 

 the Hand,' p. 106.) 



Perhaps the first manual alphabet which was published in England 

 was that of Dalgarno, the most intelligent author on the subject of 

 the instruction of the deaf and dumb next to Bulwer; he published 

 it in 1680. As few copies of his work are now to be met with, we 

 shall give his hand-alphabet, and accompany it by as much of his own 

 explanation as seems necessary for understanding his views on dacty- 

 lology. " After much search and many changes, I have at last fixt 

 upon a finger or hand-alphabet according to my mind ; for I think it 

 cannot be considerably mended, either by myself or any other (without 

 making tinker's work), for the purposes for which I have intended it ; 

 that is, a distinct placing of and easy pointing to the single letters ; 

 with the like distinct and easy abbreviation of double and triple 

 consonants." 



" TSbe scheme (I think) is BO distinct and plain in itself, that it needs 

 not much explication, at least for the single letters, which are as dis- 

 tinct by their places as the middle and two extremes of a right line 



can make them. The rules of practice are two. 1. Touch the places of 

 the vowels with a cross touch with any finyer of the right hand. 2. Poynt 



to the consonants iritk the thumb of the riyht hand. This is all that I 

 think to be needful for explaining the scheme, so far as concerns the 

 single letters." 



This was probably the finger-alphabet from which our present two- 

 handed one was derived; some similarities may be traced in them, 



AI.POAIET FOR THI DAF AND DUMB. 



particularly in the places for the vowels. The one-handed alphabet 



