LECTURE VII. 201 



that on my questioning him what I had done, he described 

 the lines round his head. But having interrupted my visits 

 for several days he had forgotten me and all the rest, as had 

 also the girl. The extent of their intellectual capacity does not 

 surpass that of an eighteen months' child, and, may be, falls 

 below it. What we are accustomed to call ideas they probably do 

 not possess, as this degree of intellectual development can only 

 be formed upon the basis of individual self-consciousness." 



E. Wagner is of opinion that a minute analysis of the psy- 

 chical phenomena in various idiots might yield important re- 

 sults as regards intellectual activity in general. There is no 

 doubt about this, nor that some of these idiots may, by careful 

 training, be raised in the intellectual scale. This much re- 

 suits, however, from the known facts, that the intellectual 

 capacity is closely connected with the cranial and cerebral 

 structure, and that it never reached a stage admitting of a 

 well articulated language. Most of these idiots are unable to 

 articulate words, some few succeed in pronouncing simple 

 sentences. But so do the parrot and the raven, which ani- 

 mals too, both by tone and pronunciation, render their words 

 significant. A domestic animal can, like the idiot, be trained 

 to cleanliness, in this respect they are therefore equal. There 

 is no trace of such decided human characters, as ideas, a 

 higher intelligence, and abstraction — not even of such primi- 

 tive notions of good and evil, nor of those original moral 

 qualities as induce some modern French authorities to 

 claim for man a separate kingdom. In many respects the 

 idiots stand below the animal : they are more helpless than 

 the latter, are unable to procure food for themselves, and to 

 preserve their life without assistance. Their whole appearance 

 is simious. The deficient forehead, the protruding, glossy, 

 rolling eyes, the projecting muzzle, the stooping posture, 

 the long arms (Gottingen idiot) and short legs, the minute 

 analogies in the cranial and cerebral structure, the restless- 

 ness, the spasmodic twitches, the shrillness of the notes of 

 pleasure or anger, — who does not here detect the ape ? 



There are no doubt individual human characters, to which I 

 add the distribution of the hair, the form of the hands and 



