362 SIGN LANGUAGE AMONG NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
ever, urged that this pictorial order natural to deaf-mutes is not natural 
to the congenitally blind who are not deaf-mute, among whom it is found 
toberythmical. It is asserted that blind persons not carefully educated 
usually converse in a metrical cadence, the action usually coming first 
in the structure of the sentence. The deduction is that all the senses 
when intact enter into the mode of intellectual conception in proportion 
to their relative sensitiveness and intensity, and hence no one mode of 
ideation can be insisted on as normal to the exclusion of others. 
Whether or not the above statement concerning the blind is true, the 
conceptions and presentations of deaf-mutes and of Indians using sign 
language because they cannot communicate by speech, are confined to 
optic and, therefore, to pictorial arrangement. 
The abbé Sicard, dissatisfied with the want of tenses and conjunc- 
tions, indeed of most of the modern parts of speech, in the natural signs, 
and with their inverted order, attempted to construct a new language 
of signs, in which the words should be given in the order of the French 
or other spoken language adopted, which of course required him to sup- 
ply a sign for every word of spoken language. Signs, whatever their 
character, could not become associated with words, or suggest them, 
until words had been learned. The first step, therefore, was to explain 
by means of natural signs, as distinct from the new signs styled method- 
ical, the meaning of a passage of verbal language. Then each word was 
taken separately and a sign affixed to it, which was to be learned by the 
pupil. If the word represented a physical object, the sign would be the 
same as the natural sign, and would be already understood, provided 
the object had been seen and was familiar; and in all cases the en- 
deavor was to have the sign convey as strong a suggestion of the mean- 
ing of the word as was possible. The final step was to gesticulate these 
signs, thus associated with words, in the exact order in which the words 
were to stand in a sentence. Then the pupil would write the very 
words desired in the exact order desired. If the previous explanation 
in natural signs had not been sufficiently full and careful, he would not 
understand the passage. The methodical signs did not profess to give 
him the ideas, except in a very limited degree, but only to show him 
how to express ideas according to the order and methods of spoken lan- 
guage. As there were no repetitions of time in narratives in the sign 
language, it became necessary to unite with the word-sign for verbs 
others, to indicate the different tenses of the verbs, and so by degrees 
the methodical signs not only were required to comprise signs for 
every word, but also, with every such sign, a grammatical sign to indi- 
cate what part of speech the word was, and, in the case of verbs, still 
other signs to show their tenses and corresponding inflections. It was, 
as Dr. Peet remarks, a cumbrous and unwieldly vehicle, ready at every 
step to break down under the weight of its own machinery. Nevertheless, 
it was industriously taught in all our schools from the date of the found- 
