August 15, 1890.] 



SCIENCE. 



87 



and there are hypotheses so violent as to be classed at once 

 with the improbable. He also tries to fix the number of 

 generations that must elapse before the deaf variety would 

 be evolved. It is necessary to the success of the plan that 

 congenitals marry congenitals, and the process must continue 

 from generation to generation. The hearing children are to 

 be eliminated from the community, and the successive 

 unions must be between those among whom heredity is al- 

 ready a fixed factor. This statement of the case reminds us 

 of Plato's ideal republic. It must consist of 11,080 persons, 

 just as many women as men, and all additions to the num- 

 ber are to be banished. The nature of the facts upon which 

 the opinion we are here considering is built may be seen 

 from the following ("Facts and Opinions," p. 98, Italics 

 mine): "According to the law of heredity, the probability 

 [of a deaf-mute race] will increase with each successive 

 generation. In the absence of any exact knaivledge of this 

 law, I shall assume thsd the probability of deaf-mute parents 

 having deaf-mute children increases through successive gen- 

 erations according to the series \, ^, ^, f, f, -i, etc." 



But suppose the variety, along the selected lines, never 

 reaches the one-fifth stage, or, reaching that, disappears in 

 the nest generation, what becomes of the formula? There 

 is no evidence in this testimony of any knowledge of the 

 disparity between males and females born deaf, and the dis- 

 cussion proceeds on the assumption that deafness is due to 

 some one physical fact. If the formula has any approxima- 

 tion to truth, then the American Asylum at Hartford, after 

 a history of more than two generations, ought to show some 

 signs of it; but of the first hundred pupils admitted, begin- 

 ning ill the year 1817, forty-five were born deaf, while of 

 the last one hundred, ending in 1889, forty-one were born 

 deaf; so that after seventy years of deaf-mute education, 

 with its enormous proportion of deaf-mute marriages and 

 the asserted increasing percentage of deaf -born children, the 

 proportion born deaf remains practically unchanged, the 

 slight change which has occurred being a decrease. Our 

 quarrel with this scientific testimony is that throughout the 

 discussion thus far assumptions and probabilities have taken 

 the place of facts, and types of development containing 

 nothing irregular have been compared to an artificial pro- 

 cess of fixing and propagating a defect. 



It is with great pleasure that we turn from the previous 

 testimonies to the few pages contributed by Professor W. E. 

 Brooks, professor of morphology in Johns Hopkins Univer- 

 sity. Here we have a clear, concise, scientific exposition of 

 the subject. He is the first of these scientific men to begin 

 with a careful definition of what an inherited characteristic 

 is, and the only one to note that a congenital peculiarity is 

 not necessarily an inherited peculiarity. He divides the 

 deaf into four classes : viz., 1. Accidental deafness after 

 birth ; 2. Loss of hearing by accident before birth ; 3. Cases 

 where there is an inherited predisposition to deafness; 4. 

 Cases of inherited deafness. 



The conditions for the evolution of a deaf-mute race, as 

 set forth by Professor Brooks, are that those among the 

 deaf who marry must have the same inherited peculiarity. 

 From this statement of the case, I doubt whether any of 

 those most familiar with the deaf would dissent. The only 

 comment they would be likely to make would be that mar- 

 riage among the deaf of those having the same inherited 



peculiarity is as rare as marriage between people with red 

 hair. Professor Brooks has also the candor to give us the 

 opinion of Professor Gallon, somewhat contradictory of the 

 views set forth in his discussion. But there can be no 

 question that the law of regression, as announced by Galton, 

 will assert itself ; and there will be a constant tendency, even 

 among the children of parents having the same peculiarity, 

 to revert to the normal type. The evolutionary process 

 which produced hearing ought in time to repeat itself, and 

 individuals in the variety would soon multiply, and the de- 

 fect in time be eliminated. The reference of Professor 

 Brooks and of all the writers to the experience of breeders 

 is not quite pertinent, for in none of the cases referred to 

 was the point to be transmitted a defect. Success in the 

 progressive development of new species ought not to be cited 

 to prove that the attempt would be equally successful in a 

 process of deterioration. This much is evident, that, if a 

 deaf-mute variety could ever be formed, it would only be 

 after rigorous selection among those whose heredity had 

 already become a fixed quantity, under the controlling pur- 

 pose of making the experiment a success. That this will 

 ever take place, the wildest pessimist of the future of the 

 deaf will hardly venture to claim. 



The above is part of the testimony presented by Professor 

 Bell to the British House of Commons. It is also part of 

 the indictment of our American system of instruction. It 

 is well, however, to look abroad, and note a few facts in re- 

 gard to those countries which are claimed to be so much in 

 advance of ours. In Italy, the home of the pure oral 

 method, more than 70 per cent of the deaf can neither read 

 nor write ( ' ' Report to the British House of Commons " j , while 

 in the six New England States only 10.8 per cent are illiter- 

 ate. We have, however, fuller statistics from Germany. 

 Taking the thirteen German provinces, and comparing them 

 with the same number of our States most populous in deaf- 

 mutes, we have to each 100,000 inhabitants the following 

 deaf-mute population : — 



German Provinces. 



East Prussia .... 

 West Prussia.... 



Posen 



Pomerania 



Hesse Nassau . . 

 Brandeuburp;. . . l' 



SiJesia 



Hohenzollem.. 



Hanover 



Rhine Provinces 



Saxony 



Westphalia 



Berlin 



3u □ 

 sSi-H 



Indiana 



Utah 



West Virginia 

 Wisconsin. . . . 

 New England . 



Kentucky 



New York . . . 

 North Carolina 



Missouri 



Ohio 



Maryland 



Pennsylvania 

 Tennessee 



These figures prove with irresistible force that the number 

 of deaf-mutes in a community is not due to the use of the 

 sign-language, nor to the congregate system of housing 

 pupils, for neither of these prevails in Germany. 



When it is further remembered that this is a new coun- 

 try ; that malignant types of such diseases as cerebro-spinal 

 meningitis and scarlet-fever have swept through whole 

 communities, in some cases more than doubling the per- 

 centage of our deaf-mute population ; that the incoming of 

 a large foreign population, with all the ills attending the 



