GESTURE-LANGUAGE AND WORD-LANGUAGE. 65 



learns from tlie gestures of lils parents and companions what 

 they learnt through words. We speak conventionally of the 

 uneducated deaf-and-dumb, but every deaf-and-dumb child is 

 educated more or less by living among those who speak, and 

 this education begins in the cradle. And on the other hand, 

 no child attains to speech independently of the gesture-lan- 

 guage, for it is in great measure by means of such gestures as 

 pointing, nodding, and so forth, that language is first taught. 



In old times, when the mental capacity of the deaf-and-dumb 

 was little known, it was thought by the Greeks that they were 

 incapable of education, since hearing, the sense of instruction, 

 was wanting to them. Quite consistent with this notion is 

 the confusion which runs through language between mental 

 stupidity, and deafness, dumbness, and even blindness. Sur- 

 dus means " deaf," and also " stupid •/' a hollow nut is a deaf- 

 nut, tauhe Nuss ; kux^o^ means dumb, deaf, stupid. " Speech- 

 less " [infans, vrjino'i) being a natural term for a child, in a 

 similar way " dumb " [tump, tumh) becomes in Old Glerman a 

 common word for young, giddy, thoughtless, till at last " dumb 

 and wise " come to mean nothing more than " lads and grown 

 men," as where in the tournament many a shock is heard of 

 wise and of dumb, and the breaking of the lances sounds up 

 towards the sky, 



"Von wisen und von tumben man horte manesren stoz, 

 Da der schefte brechen gein der lioehe doz." ' 



Even Kant is to be found committing himself to the opinion, 

 so amazing, one would think, to anybody who has ever been 

 inside a deaf-and-dumb Institution, that a bom mute can never 

 attain to more than something analogous to reason (einem 

 Analogon der Vernunft) ? 



The evidence of teachers of the deaf-and-dumb goes to 

 prove, that in their untaught state, or at least with only such 

 small teaching as they get from the signs of their relatives and 

 friends, their thought is very limited, but still it is human 

 thought, while when they have been regularly instructed and 

 taught to read and write, their minds may be developed up to 



' Nibel. Not, 37. 



2 Kant, 'Anthropologie ;' Konigsberg, 1798, p. 49. Schmalz, p. 46. 



F 



