BORN BLIND AND DEAF. 39 



words, without attempting to explain to him that the elements 

 of these words were letters, and still less that these letters were 

 consonants and vowels. Indeed, how was it possible for him 

 to annex any notion to the technical terms of grammar, when 

 . he was not yet in possession of a language, and when he had 

 only a few fugitive notions to fix and to express ?" 



In these extracts, M. Sicard describes, with great candour, 

 the process of thought by which he was conducted to (what I 

 consider as by far the most important of the many improve- 

 ments which he has introduced into his art) the simple, yet 

 luminous idea, of copying his plan of instruction, not from 

 the example of a schoolmaster teaching a child to read, but 

 from the example of the child itself, in acquiring the use of its 

 mother-tongue. Of these two methods, the former, it must be 

 owned, is by far the more obvious ; and where mere articula- 

 tion is the chief object of the teacher, it will probably be found 

 the more easy and effectual in practice. But Sicard's aim was 

 of a different, and of a higher nature ; — not to astonish the 

 vulgar by the sudden conversion of a dumb child into a speak- 

 ing automaton ; but, by affording scope to those means which 

 Nature herself has provided for the gradual evolution of our 

 intellectual powers, to convert his pupil into a rational and 

 moral being. The details of his lessons, accordingly, are not 

 more interesting to the few, who may attempt the education of 

 such unfortunate exceptions as Massieu or Mitchell, than to 

 all those who delight in tracing to their elementary principles 

 the materials of human knowledge, and in marking the first 

 openings of the infant mind *. 



In 



* See the Note at the end of the Memoir. 



