l82 



MY LIFE 



[Chap. 



and Helen Keller, in which was added blindness, so that 

 the sense of touch was alone available for receiving ideas. 

 The effect in developing the mind and enabling the sufferers 

 to live full, contented, and even happy lives has been most 

 marvellous, and give us a wonderful example of the capacity 

 of the mind for receiving the most abstract ideas through one 

 sense alone. Such persons, without proper training, would 

 be in danger of becoming idiotic or insane from the absence 

 of all materials on which to exercise the larger portion of 

 their higher mental faculties. It is observed that, when 

 first being taught the connection of arbitrary signs with 

 objects, they are docile but apathetic, not in the least under- 

 standing the purport of the training. But after a time, when 

 they perceive that they are acquiring a means of communi- 

 cating their own wishes and even ideas to others, and receiv- 

 ing ideas and knowledge of the outer world from them, their 

 whole nature seems transformed, and the acquisition and 

 extension of this knowledge becomes the great object and 

 the great pleasure of their lives. It seems to occupy all their 

 thoughts and employ all their faculties, and they make an 

 amount of progress which astonishes their teachers and seems 

 quite incredible to persons ordinarily constituted. It gives 

 them, in fact, what every one needs, some useful or enjoyable 

 occupation for body and mind, and is almost equivalent to 

 furnishing them with the faculties they have lost. A similar 

 explanation may be given of the comparatively rapid acquisi- 

 tion by the deaf and dumb of those difficult arts — lip- 

 reading by watching the motion of the lips and face of the 

 speaker, and intelligible speech by imitating the motions 

 during speech of the lips, tongue, and larynx by using a 

 combination of vision and touch. These give them new 

 means of communication with their fellows, and their whole 

 mental powers are therefore devoted to their acquisition. It 

 is a new employment for their minds, equivalent to a new 

 and very interesting game for children, and under such con- 

 ditions learning becomes one of their greatest pleasures. 

 The same principle applies to the rapid acquisition of a new 

 language by the illiterate. Being debarred from reading and 



