MENTAL SPHERE OP THE DEAF, DUMB, AND BLIND. 313 



sumption. The senses are important secondary instruments, indis- 

 pensable for accomplishing certain manifestations of the mind, but, in 

 no way, determining its power. 



The example of the deaf and dumb is illustrative of this matter. 1 If 

 a child be born deaf, he is necessarily dumb ; inasmuch as he is unable 

 to hear those sounds which, by their combination, constitute language; 

 and cannot therefore imitate them; a connexion between the functions 

 of hearing and speech, which was not well known to the ancients. For 

 a length of time, these objects of compassionate interest were esteemed 

 to be beyond the powers of any kind of intellectual culture, and were 

 permitted to remain in a state of the most profound ignorance. The 

 ingenuity of the scientific philanthropist has, however, devised modes 

 of instruction, by which their mental power has been exhibited in the 

 most gratifying manner, and in a way to prove, that the sense of hear- 

 ing is not indispensable for mental development; but that its place may 

 be supplied, to a great extent, by the proper exercise of others. The 

 deaf and dumb, deprived of the advantages of spoken language, are 

 compelled to have recourse to the only kind available to them, that 

 addressed to the eye. In this typical way, by a well-devised system of 

 instruction they can be taught to preserve their ideas, and to multiply 

 them, like the perfectly formed, by the spoken and written language, 

 without one or the other of which the human mind would have remained 

 in perpetual infancy. Thus, the deaf and dumb have not only like 

 ideas ; but the same words to convey them to others. 



Yet the deaf and dumb are not so much the objects of our commise- 

 ration as they who have been - deprived, from birth or from early in- 

 fancy, of both sight and hearing, and have thus been devoid of two of 

 the most important inlets for the entrance of impressions from the sur- 

 rounding world. In such case, it is obvious, they are shut out from all 

 instruction, except what can be afforded by the senses of touch, smell, 

 and taste; yet even here we have the strongest evidence of independent 

 intellect. One of the most striking cases of the kind is that of the 

 Scotch boy Mitchell, the object of much interest to Spurzheim and to 

 Dugald Stewart, 2 both of whom have described his case in their 

 writings. It is matter of uncertainty, whether either his deafness or 

 blindness was total. The evidences of the sensation of hearing were, 

 in a high degree, vague and unsatisfactory; but he gave more con- 

 vincing proofs of the possession of partial vision. He could, for exam- 

 ple, distinguish day from night; and, when quite young, amused himself 

 by looking at the sun through crevices in the door, and by kindling a 

 fire. At the age of twelve, the tympanum of each ear was perforated ; 

 but without any advantage. In his fourteenth year, the operation for 

 cataract was performed on the right eye, after which he recognized 

 more readily the presence of external objects; but never made use of 

 sight to become acquainted with the qualities of bodies. Before and 

 after this period, red, white, and yellow particularly attracted his at- 



1 Gall, op. cit., i. 119. 



1 Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, &c. ; Transactions of the Royal Society 

 of Edinburgh, vol. vii.; and Dr. Gordon, ibid!, vol. vi.; also, History of James Mitchell, a boy 

 born blind and deaf, by James Wardrop, London, 1813. 



