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education. Nobody has ever succeeded, or ever can succeec , 
in conveying spiritual instruction to the deaf and dumb by 
gesture, unless indeed conventional signs be used as transla- 
tions of previously-understood written or spoken words, as m 
the case of the finger-alphabet for instance, which no unedu- 
cated deaf-mute can use. Such an isolated race of human 
beings as we are here supposing might, indeed, become mor 
and more morally degraded; but without speech, and excluded 
from all example and all external infiuence, they could never 
morally advance. In a late number of the Quarterly Berieiy 
(No 211) the writer of au article on the Poleyman Islanders 
observes that “ the present state of these people shows the ten- 
dency of men to descend lower and lower in the social sea , 
as they become more widely scattered and separated into small 
1S °Now tfitbe true that without speech civilization could not 
be attained, it is equally true that without civhization speech 
could not be invented. No people would invent what they had 
n0 Here n then if’ a dilemma. Speech is indispensable to civiliza- 
tion, and civilization is indispensable to the mvention of ^ speech 
How can such a contradiction be avoided on the hypothesis 
that speech is of human invention ? “ Modern science may 
perhaps discover some way of reconciling e appa 
consistency, but common sense, I think, cannot. And l this, 
be it remembered, is the only tribunal to which I here appeal. 
Its functions are definite and unmistakeable, whereas, m the 
modern acceptation, “science” means anything excep now 
ledge. 
In what has hitherto been said, however, the advantages of 
the ear even to a speechless community of uncivilized men, 
have not been dwelt upon. There is no doubt that the P 08 * es ' 
sion of the organs of hearing would place them in a position 
superior to that of deaf-mutes. They could recogmize sounds 
and would thus be conscious of noises made by themselves or 
others ; of the cries and growlmgs of l^d ammals an 
the shrieks and melodious uttenngs of the feathered tribes. 
Certain of these sounds they would find that they T 
could imitate, and that they could thus, m j-i* 
tion of a quadruped or a bird, or of any natural sounding 
object, as the rushing torrent, or the moaning win , 
those peculiarities which address the eye or the organs of 
touch, the other characteristics which address ear - , 
congenitally deaf know no difference between the note i 
the cuckoo and those of the nightingale. They can dis- 
