HALLERY. ] SIGNS OF DEAF-MUTES. 277 
priate gestures after their words have become uncontrollable. It is fur- 
ther noticeable in them that mere ejaculations, or sounds which are only 
the result of a state of feeling, instead of a desire to express thought, 
are generally articulated with accuracy. Patients who have been in 
the habit of swearing preserve their fluency in that division of their 
vocabulary. 
UNINSTRUCTED DEAF-MUTES. 
The signs made by congenital and uninstructed deaf-mutes to be now 
considered are either strictly natural signs, invented by themselves, or 
those of a colloquial character used by such mutes where associated. 
The accidental or merely suggestive signs peculiar to families, one mem- 
ber of which happens to be a mute, are too much affected by the other 
members of the family to be of certain value. Those, again, which are 
taught in institutions have become conventional and designedly adapted 
to translation into oral speech, although founded by the abbé de ’'Epée, 
followed by the abbé Sicard, in the natural signs first above mentioned. 
A great change has doubtless occurred in the estimation of congen- 
ital deaf-mutes since the Justinian Code, which consigned them forever 
to legal infaney, as incapable of intelligence, and classed them with the 
insane. Yet most modern writers, for instance Archbishop Whately and 
Max Miiller, have declared that deaf-mutes could not think until after 
having been instructed. It cannot be denied that the deaf-mute thinks 
after his instruction either in the ordinary gesture signs or in the finger 
alphabet, or more lately in artificial speech. By this instruction he has 
become master of a highly-developed language, such as English or 
French, which he can read, write, and actually talk, but that foreign 
language he has obtained through the medium of signs. This is a con- 
clusive proof that signs constitute a real language and one which ad- 
mits of thought, for no one can learn a foreign language unless he had 
some language of his own, whether by descent or acquisition, by which 
it could be translated, and such translation into the new language could 
not even be commenced unless the mind had been already in action and 
intelligently using the original language for that purpose. In fact the 
use by deaf-mutes of signs originating in themselves exhibits a creative 
action of mind and innate faculty of expression beyond that of ordinary 
speakers who acquired language without conscious effort. The thanks 
of students, both of philology and psychology, are due to Prof. SAMUEL 
PortTER, of the National Deaf Mute College, for his response to the 
question, “Is thought possible without language?” published in the 
Princeton Review for January, 1880. 
With regard to the sounds uttered by deaf-mutes, the same explana- 
tion of heredity may be made as above, regarding the words invented 
by young children. Congenital deaf-mutes at first make the same 
sounds as hearing children of the same age, and, often being susceptible 
to vibrations of the air, are not suspected of being deaf. When that 
affliction is ascertained to exist, all oral utterances from the deaf-mute 
are habitually repressed by the parents. 
