May 16, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



763 



The answer is that the conceptions under- 

 lying mathematics, music and painting 

 have already been acquired spontaneously, 

 have become part of our very nature ; and 

 that in case congenital blindness or deaf- 

 ness has forcibly prevented the acquisition 

 of the conceptions of color or sound, it 

 has thereby made the study of the princi- 

 ples of painting or of music impossible. 



Let us look at this a little more closely. 



That every youth has acquired sponta- 

 neously and inevitably the conceptions un- 

 derlying mathematics, the conceptions of 

 number, distance, direction and force, 

 seems clear. 



The child deprived of every sense save 

 touch begins with its first breath to famil- 

 iarize itself with these conceptions. The 

 resistance offered by fixed objects, the 

 mobility of movable ones, the resistance 

 which friction and inertia oppose to his 

 moving them, the fact that he cannot move 

 the bed post, that he can move his hand 

 with ease, and his heaviest toy with diffi- 

 culty, from the first give him the conception 

 of force. The conception of two hands as 

 distinguished from one is the conception of 

 number, forced on him by every scene. 

 Every glance of the eye, or if he is blind, 

 every reaching out for toy or foot, gives the 

 conceptions of distance and direction. 

 These conceptions then are inevitable ; they 

 cannot be shut out by defects of the senses ; 

 hence the study of mathematics does not 

 call for any special preparation comparable 

 with the laboratory preparation for the 

 study of chemistry and metallurgy. 



So is it with music and painting to the 

 child with all his senses. 



The sighted youth comes to the study of 

 painting Avith an eye trained from first 

 infancy through sixteen hours of every day 

 of most of his seventeen years, in color per- 

 ceptions. They have been sunk into his 

 very nature by the glories of the sunset, 

 by the marvelous harmonies of the land- 



scape, by the play of hiunan expression, by 

 the effects of shadow and perspective. He 

 comes with conceptions so familiar and 

 complete, so essential a part of his very 

 being, that henceforth he cannot think 

 shape without interjecting his conceptions 

 of shade and color ; he cannot conceive any 

 object without conceiving it as colored or 

 shaded. 



To the study of the laws of music the 

 youth with normal ear, the so-called ear for 

 music, comes with the experience of seven- 

 teen years, those wax-like plastic years, of 

 the sensuous pleasure due to certain sounds 

 and sequences of sound, and the annoyance 

 which others cause, not only to himself, but 

 to those about him. The mother's lullaby 

 begins his acquaintance with pleasurable 

 sound; his own shrieks, the clanging bell, 

 the squeaking slate pencil, early impress on 

 him the disagreeable sound. So complete 

 and familiar are his sound-conceptions that 

 no special training in them is imperatively 

 needed to enable him to begin the study of 

 the science of music. 



But let congenital blindness or deafness 

 forcibly prevent him from acquiring these 

 conceptions, and it thereby as forcibly and 

 as absolutely unfits him for the study of 

 the science of color or music. How can the 

 congenitally blind, to whom red is but as 

 the blare of the trumpet, comprehend a 

 discourse on chiaroscuro? Or with what 

 profit can you explain to them the proper 

 tint of shadows while all conception of both 

 tint and shadow is not simply vague, im- 

 perfect, rudimentary, but absent? Or how 

 can the congenitally deaf understand the 

 very terms harmony, discord, major and 

 minor? Before they can conceive what 

 minor means, must they not have some con- 

 ception of sound? 



Even after the missing sense has been 

 given to one thus congenitally defective, to 

 acquire the missing conceptions is a work 

 of time. Open blind eyes at seventeen, and 



