74 PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 
They work at trades or businesses in these towns, and their 
leisure hours are spent almost exclusively in each other’s society. 
Under such circumstances can we be surprised that the majority of 
these deaf persons marry deaf persons, and that we have as 
a result a small but necessarily increasing number of cases of 
hereditary deafness due to this cause. Such unions do not gene- 
rally result.in the production of deaf offspring, because the deaf- 
ness of the parents in a large proportion of cases is of accidental 
origin, and accidental deafness is no more likely to be inherited 
than the accidental loss of a limb. Still I would submit that the 
constant. selection of the deaf by the deaf in marriage is fraught 
with danger to the community. 
Why the English Language should be Substituted for the Sign 
Language as a Vernacular. 
If we examine the position in adult life of deaf children who 
have been taught to speak, or who have acquired the English lan- 
guage as a vernacular, whether in its written or spoken forms, we 
find an entirely different set of tendencies coming into play, especi- 
ally if these persons have not been forced in childhood to make the 
acquaintance of large numbers of other deaf children, by social 
imprisonment for years together in the same school or institution 
apart from the hearing world. 
Their vernacular use of the English language renders it easy for 
them to communicate with hearing persons by writing, or by word 
of mouth if they have been taught to articulate; and hearing per- 
sons can easily communicate with them by writing, or by word or 
mouth if they have been taught the use of the eye as a substitute 
for the ear. The restraints placed upon their intercourse with the 
world by their lack of hearing leads them to seek the society of 
books, and thus they tend to rise mentally to an ever higher and 
higher plane. A cultivated mind delights in the society of edu- 
cated people, and their knowledge of passing events derived from 
newspapers forms an additional bond of union between them and 
the hearing world. 
If they have formed in childhood fow deaf acquaintances, they 
meet in after life hundreds of hearing persons for every deaf acquain- 
tance, and if they marry, the chances are immensely in favor of 
their marrying hearing persons. 
There is nothing in the deaf-mute societies in the large cities to 
