ANIMALS. 36-5 



onl) by sensual objects. We have an instance of a young man, 

 wbo, being born deaf, was restored at the age of twenty-four to 

 perfect hearing: the account is given in the Memoirs of tlm 

 Academy of Sciences, 1703, page 18. 



A young man, of the town of Chartres, between the age oi 

 twenty-three and twenty four, the son of a tradesman, and deaf and 

 dumb from his birth, began to speak all of a sudden, to the great 

 astonishment of the whole town. He gave them to understand, 

 that about three or four months before, he had heard the sounc. 

 Df the bells for the first time, and was gi-eatly surprised at this 

 new and unknown sensation. After some time, a kind of water 

 issued from his left ear, and lie then heard perfectly well with both. 

 During these three months, he was sedulously employed in lis- 

 tening, without saying a word, and accustoming himself to speak 

 softly (so as not to be heard) the words pronoimced by others, 

 fie laboured hard also in perfecting himself in the pronunciation, 

 and in the ideas attached to every sound. At length, having 

 supposed himself qualified to break silence, he declared, that he 

 could now speak, although as yet but imperfectly. Soon after, _ 

 some able divines questioned him concerning his ideas of his past 

 state ; and principally with respect to God, his soid, the morality 

 or turpitude of actions. The young man, however, had not 

 driven his solitary speculations into that channel. He had gone 

 to mass indeed with his parents, and learned to sign Jiimself 

 with the cross, to kneel down and assume all the grimaces of a 

 man that was praying ; but he did all this without any manner 

 of knowledge of the intention or the cause ; he saw others do 

 the like, and that was enough for him ; he knew nothing even of 

 death, and it never entered into his head ; he led a life of pure 

 animal instinct ; cntirriy taken up with sensible objects, and 

 Buch as were present, he did not seem even to make as many re- 

 tlections upon these, as niight reasonably be expected from his 

 improving situation : and yet the young man was not in want ot 

 understanding ; but the understanding of a man deprived of all 

 commerce with others, is so very confined, that the mind is in 

 some measure totally under the control of its immediate sensa. 

 tions. 



Notwithstanding, it is veiy possible to communicate ideiis to 

 deaf men, which they previously wanted, ami even give them 

 very precise notions of some abstract subjects, by means of signs 



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