34 ACCOUNT OF A BOY 



These strictures I cannot help taking this opportunity of re- 

 commending to the attention of those who may attempt the far- 

 ther instruction of young Mitchell. The following abridged 

 translation* of a passage in the preface, may, in the mean 

 time, suggest some useful hints. 



• * • * • 



. . " But, if there should be found a person deaf and 

 dumb, in whose case the use of this visible language was imprac- 

 ticable ; if, among the afflicting exceptions and mutilations of 

 nature, an individual should occur, deaf and blind from his birth, 

 to what class of signs should we have recourse in attempting his 

 education ? At what an immense distance from other men 

 would a being so cruelly degraded be placed ; and how difficult 

 to transport him across that gulf by which he is separated 

 from the rest of his species ? The means of instruction em- 

 ployed in ordinary instances of dumbness, would here be ma- 

 nifestly inapplicable ; all of these means presupposing the use 

 of sight, to which a constant reference is made, not only in the 

 communication of physical ideas, but in typifying the processes 

 of thought, and in rousing the dormant powers of the under- 

 standing. 



" I flatter myself, I have already proved, that, from the be- 

 ginning, Man possessed, in his own bodily organs, two differ- 

 ent media for conveying his ideas ; and that, instead of em- 

 ploying oral speech^ he might have had recourse to a manual 

 language. Why, then, might we not, in the supposed case of 



a 



* In this translation, I have not only omitted several sentences in the 

 original, which did not appear to bear upon my present object, but have not 

 scrupled to interpolate a few clauses of my own, which I thought might be use- 

 ful in conveying the author's meaning more clearly to an English reader. The 

 sense of the passage is rendered, to the best of my judgment, with perfect fide- 

 lity. 



