64 PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON, 
to poverty for their sake. He soon observed that these children 
were communicating with one another, but not by speech. They 
were inventing a language of their own, unlike any of the spoken 
languages of the earth—a language of gestures. These children 
were reasoning by means of this language; they were thinking in 
gestures instead of in words, and the idea occurred to the Abbe de 
l’Epee that the old dogma that had for so many hundred years pre- 
vented the education of the deaf was a fallacy. Here was nature 
developing an instrument of reason with which speech had nothing 
to do. Why should he not study this gesture language and assist 
these children in their attempts to perfect a means of communica- 
tion of this kind, and why should he not use this means of com- 
munication so as to lead their minds to higher and ever higher 
thoughts? He did so and succeeded in developing the “sign lan- 
guage” that is now so extensively employed in this country in 
the education of the deaf. The experiment at once attracted at- 
tention. Kings and Emperors visited the humble abode of the 
Abbe de l’Epee and were astonished by what they saw. He con- 
versed with his pupils in the gesture language, and he taught them 
through its means the meaning of written French, so that they were 
enabled to communicate with hearing persons by writing. 
The Fallacy that a Gesture Language is the only Form of Language 
that is Natural to the Congenitally Deaf. 
The old fallacy was done away with, but a new one immediately 
took its place, which has been introduced into our country with the 
language of signs, and is now the main: obstacle to the acquisition 
of English by the congenitally deaf. The fallacy to which I allude 
is that this gesture language is the only language that is natural to 
the congenitally deaf, and that therefore such children must acquire 
this language as their vernacular before learning the English lan- 
guage, and must be taught the meaning of the latter through its 
means. To my mind such a statement consists of a succession of 
fallacies, each one resting on the preceding. The proposition that 
the sign language is the only language that is natural to congeni- 
tally deaf children is like the proposition that the English language 
is the only language that is natural to hearing children. It is nat- 
ural only in the same sense that English is natural to an American 
child. It is the language of the people by whom he is surrounded. 
A congenitally deaf child who for the first time enters an insti- 
