610 



DEAF AND DUMB. 



instructors of the deaf mutes liave since been divided. 

 In 1761, Thomas Braidwood, of Edinburgh, devised 

 a system of instruction, in which, as in that of 

 Ileinirke, articulation was the chief object. Both 

 these persons, for a long time, refused to commimi- 

 cate their inventions, except for a compensation, and 

 under seal of secrecy ; and their principles have 

 scarcely extended beyond the countries in which they 

 originated. J)e PKj>ee devoted his fortune and his 

 life to the instruction of his pupils, and the gratui- 

 tous communication of the art to all who would learn 

 it; and, in consequence of his efforts and instruc- 

 tions, schools were founded by Silvestri at Rome, 

 Stork at Vienna, Guyot at Groningen, and Ulrich in 

 Switzerland, which still exist in the hands of their 

 disciples. The system of De 1'Epee was materially 

 improved by Sicard, his pupil and successor in the 

 Paris institution, who is admitted to have surpassed 

 his master, and to rank with him as one of the 

 greatest benefactors of the deaf mute. Towards the 

 close of the last century, Assarotti, of Genoa, esta- 

 blished, by his own benevolent efforts, an institution 

 which ranks among the first in Europe, and formed 

 a system of instruction, based, indeed, upon that in 

 Sicard's works, but involving important improve- 

 ments, which entitle him to be considered the foun- 

 der of the Italian school. 



European Institutions. From a recent report of the 

 Paris institution, with some additional accounts, it 

 appears, that there are now eighty-one establishments 

 for deaf mutes in Europe ; of which Spain lias one, 

 Portugal one, Italy six, Switzerland four, Baden four, 

 Wuertemburg three, Bavaria one, Prussia eight, the 

 rest of Germany ten, Denmark two, Sweden one, 

 Russia one, Holland four, Great Britain ten, and 

 France twenty-six. Sixty-two of these have been 

 established within the last thirty years. A few in 

 Great Britain, and in Germany and Switzerland, are 

 conducted on the system of Heinicke and Braidwood. 

 The rest, including several in Great Britain, adopt 

 the fundamental principles of De 1'Epee and Sicard. 



Systems of Instruction, The objects to be accom- 

 plished in the education of a deaf mute, are to teach 

 him an entire language, and to give him all that 

 mass of moral, religious, and ordinary knowledge 

 that is necessary for him, as a social and immortal 

 being, for which, in other children, twelve or fif- 

 teen years of constant intercourse with society, and 

 much study, are deemed necessary ; all this is to be 

 done in six, and often even in three years. It is ob- 

 vious that to accomplish this, some method, more 

 rapid in its results than the ordinary one, must be 

 adopted. The earlier instructors of the deaf mute 

 usually had only one, or a very few pupils, and have 

 given us hints for instruction, rather than a system. 

 The first account which we have of the reduction of 

 this art to a regular and permanent form, is in the 

 works of Heinicke and De PEpee. Heinicke, like 

 many of his predecessors, considered the want of 

 speech as the great misfortune of the deaf mute, and 

 made it the great object of instruction to teach him 

 to articulate in order to aid the progress of his own 

 mind, as well as to enable him to communicate with 

 others in this manner. We are told by the succes- 

 sor of Heinicke in the Leipsic school, that the follow- 

 ing " are and were the views and principles of 

 Heinicke and his disciples :" that " we think hi ar- 

 ticulate words, and cannot think in written words :" 

 " that written words can never lead to the develop- 

 ment of ideas, in children born deaf;" and that " no 

 freedom in thought, or in the use of language, can 

 be produced without articulation, either by signs or 

 by written language." If it were credible that sounds 

 were more allied to abstract ideas than objects of 

 tight are; if we could forget that we often have 



ideas for which we cannot easily find words, the facts 

 we have stated concerning the language of signs, and 

 the capacity of several hundreu pupils, educated 

 merely by signs, in the French and American institu- 

 tions, to read and write, and converse mid reason, 

 prove the entire fallacy of these views ; and the ar- 

 gument nli ignorantia cannot be adduced, at this day, 

 on that subject, without disgrace. Those who fol- 

 low this system admit the use of the sign language 

 in the early stages of instruction, but seek to banish 

 it as early as possible, considering it as a rude lan- 

 guage, incapable of improvement, and which retards 

 the expansion of the pupil's mind, and renders it 

 less necessary for him to attend to writ.) en language. 

 They adopt the methods of the early instructors, in 

 waiting for occasions to teach wonl> and explain 

 phrases. They rely upon repeating the word or 

 phrase in the appropriate circumstances, and in ques- 

 tions and answers, as the means of making it under- 

 stood, rather than on direct explanation, or examples 

 presented by the sign language. Too many of this 

 school forget one of the fundamental maxims of 

 Heinicke " first ideas, then words" and occupy 

 the pupil for a long time with mere mechanical arti- 

 culation. In one school, months are passed in the 

 mere study of names attached to pictures, without 

 the least attempt to excite or enlighten the mind by 

 means of signs ; and usually a year is passed, at a 

 period of lite when most of the mental faculties are 

 ripe for development, in the mere exercise of me- 

 mory (in learning names of objects, and qualities, 

 and actions), which only requires the powers of an 

 infant, and would be aided, instead of retarded, by the 

 expansion of the mind, as the experience of the other 

 schools fully proves. Religious instruction is rarely 

 attempted in this school, before the second year, or 

 until it can be given in words, from the belief that it 

 cannot be given correctly by signs ; and in the school 

 of Leipsic, it is even deferred to the third year. The 

 attention of De PEpe'e, and other instructors of the 

 same views, was called especially to the intellectual 

 and moral wants of the deaf mute ; and they deemed 

 it most important first to develope his powers, and 

 cultivate his feelings ; and. next, to give him such a 

 knowledge of written language as is indispensable 

 to the acquisition of knowledge, and the communica- 

 tion of his wants. They found the only medium of con- 

 veying truth, or explaining terms in the sign language 

 which we have described. They employed it in its 

 natural state, to explain the first simple terms. They 

 discovered that it was capable of extension, and they 

 preserved and cultivated it, as we have mentioned, 

 as a language intelligible to the pupil, by which they 

 could always refer to any objects of thought or feel- 

 ing, physical, intellectual, or moral, and thus form 

 original explanations of new words, and avoid the 

 error which might arise from the imperfection of pre- 

 vious explanations. Words they considered as arbi- 

 trary signs, and De P Epee maintained, that the 

 instruction of the deaf mute, like that of a foreigner, 

 ought to consist in a course of translation and retrans- 

 lation from the known to the unknown language. To 

 aid in this process, he added a series of methodical and 

 conventional signs, founded on analogy, for the parti- 

 cles and inflections of language. These were used 

 chiefly in instruction, in order to render the translation 

 complete, as well as to indicate the character and 

 meaning of the connectives. He does not appear to 

 have practised fully upon his own principles, but occu- 

 pied himself too exclusively with the intellectual im- 

 provements of his pupils, and with single words, and 

 seems to have despaired of enabling them to use lan- 

 guage, in its connexion, except in a mechanical manner 

 Sicard endeavoured to complete the plan of his mas- 

 ter, by the improvement of the signs employed ; and 



