The Genesis of Ideas In the Blind Deaf Mute
999 Art. Y.? :Author: Mrs. Burnet. Crimplesham Vicarage, Downham Market.
Few and comparatively scanty are the records of tlie very early life of most of those who have lived deaf, dumb, and blind. It has been estimated that one infant in every million is a congenital blind deaf mute. Yet of these small indeed must be the number who survive early infancy ; as the causes which led to the deprivation of the organs of sense would often lead also to other complications, such as paralysis, idiocy, deformity, or extreme decrepitude. From very early times occasional allusion has been made to these unfortunates. St. Augustine observed of the blind deaf mute of the gospel, that St. Luke purposely makes mention that he was only dumb to sign unto us the greatest ill that could befall him. Ecclesiastical writers report that one, Amagildus, who was both deaf, dumb, and blind, was restored to all his senses whilst he prayed unto St. Julian I John Eulwer, writing in 1648, says: “But most miserable are they who are deaf, dumb, and blind, an example of which wretched condition we have in Platerus, of a certain abbot who could no other way understand and perceive the minds of others than by their drawing letters upon his naked arm with their finger or a piece of wood, expressing some intimation thus to him, out of which singly, by themselves apart perceived, he collected a word, and of many words a sentence ; which, how miserable a case it was, one may easily understand.” A similar account is to be found in Governor Winthrop’s Journal for 1637, of an old woman in Ipswich, who came from England : ” Her son would write upon her hand some letters of a name, and by other such motions would inform her of any man’s name, or make her understand anything.” A very remarkable and melancholy account was given by Dr Howe, in one of his reports, of a boy of 14 who became deaf, and subsequently blind, from morbid sensibility of the brain, after undue and precocious mental activity. His mind was not affected at all, but it was getting closed up in the body, and as much beyond the reach of other minds as though his body was in the act of being enclosed in solid masonry. Dr Howe recommended that immediate advantage should be taken of what hearing remained, to tcacli him the manual alphabet, because afterwards it would be a very slow process ; and the sequel was not told. Several examples might be easily found of congenital deaf-mutism, complicated with blindness, idiocy, &c., which would throw little or no light upon the subject under consideration. Such shattered and crippled wrecks of humanity seem oaly to float upon the stream of life that they may awaken the love and command the succour of hearts the most benevolent and philanthropic.
Two cases of much interest were discovered by Sir W. R. Wilde during his investigations under the Census Commission in Ireland. Daniel Cole, of Dublin, a boy of ten, the seventh of eight children, was born deaf, dumb, and blind. The mother attributed the defect in her child to a fright she had received. It was much to be regretted that this poor child’s education had not received the attention which it deserved.
Sir W. Ii. Wilde, in the appendix to his work on “Aural Surgery,” says : ” This boy, whom I have had many opportunities of examining, is delicately formed, and had an attack of hydrocephalus in infancy. The head is natural, but the face and general appearance convey at first sight an appearance of idiocy, the eyes being very large, egg-shaped, turned permanently downwards, and completely covered by the thinned eyelids?The tongue is nearly double its natural size, it is incapable of being retracted, and the mother says it has remained in this state from birth.” It is the more surprising to hear after this description that ” he is by no means devoid of intellect, and is in all other respects healthy. He has already acquired certain signs by which to express his peculiar wants, and his mother, who is a person of intelligence, and exhibits much affection for her child, has taught him several letters of the manual alphabet by making him feel her fingers, lie can thus figure the letters upon his fingers, forming bread and several other words. His sense of touch seems particularly acute, and he feels with great care every substance with which he comes in contact, and especially the dresses of persons around him. He is cautious of the fire, and in moving about the room carefully avoids it, keeping at a particular distance and walking up and down before it when he wishes to warm himself.” ‘G-reat caution with regard to fire was also noticed in Hugh Gorman, of the county Tyrone, an intelligent boy of six, born deaf, dumb, and blind. His mother placed him near the fire, and he cautiously passed from one side to the other, keeping at an equal distance all the way. Some considerable importance may well be attached to this trait in considering the relative intelligence of blind deaf inutes, who should certainly show it whenever they have been in the slightest degree burnt, for if an infant of but five months old be allowed to slightly burn its finger in the flame of a candle as it for the first time essays to grasp one, its caution with regard to heat is very marked from that time forward. It will connect the appearance of steam with heat, and refuse to taste any food when it sees steam issuing from it, until it has assured itself by repeatedly feeling the exterior of the vessel containing it, that it is sufficiently cool. Hugh Gorman’s sense of touch appeared to be particularly acute; he also smelt everything he touched with which he was not previously acquainted. Daniel Gilbert Tait was a blind deaf mute found in the Shetland Islands ; he had been so little cared for that he could not even walk erect. Hannah Lamb, born 1799, deaf, dumb, and blind, was burnt to death 1808, which was also the sad fate of Mary McLeod, born blind at Portobello, near Edinburgh, 1824. She lost the power .of speech at three, and moved about on her hands and feet like the neglected Tait; she was like him too in her habits, which were more or less idiotic.
It would seem, indeed, impossible to find an authentic instance of an individual born deaf and blind, yet withal capable of any high degree of intellectual and moral development. The evidence seems rather to prove with overwhelming conclusiveness that the unconscious memories of the first two years of life are of inestimable importance in the genesis of ideas in the blind deaf mute. Even Margaret Sullivan, who lived in Rotlierhithe workhouse, cannot be claimed as an exception. For the fact of congenital deafness would appear from a note appended to Dr Fowler’s published papers, read before the British Association at Plymouth, to be at least doubtful. Mr. Johnson, writing from the workhouse, states that the early history of the case was very obscure, that she probably lost all three senses from smallpox at the age of four. It was also said that she distinctly remembered the time of her illness, anf1 having been previously able to see and hear. She was after ,/ards enabled to see partially. Dr Howe, when on a visit to England, went to see her at the workhouse; he found that the tradition there was that she had cried out her eyes when a little child, because her father deserted her. She was twenty-three years old when Dr Howe saw her, learned very readily twenty words and all the letters during the six lessons which he was able to give her. He considered that she made wonderful progress, and learnt more in two hours than Laura Bridgman did in two weeks.
Probably by far the most pathetic history on record is that of Jacques Edouard Meystre, of Lausanne. When eleven months THE GEXESIS OF IDEAS IN TIIE BLIND DEAF MUTE. 225 old, and just able to lisp papa and mamma, he became deaf from smallpox, and being made blind at seven years old from the accidental discharge of a pistol loaded with small shot, retained through life the most vivid remembrance of all that he had thus lost. He could never of his own accord bear to allude to the cause of his blindness, and turned pale as he so touchingly told his highly-gifted and philosophical instructor that he also had had two eyes and that it was very agreeable to see.
Lucy Reed, born at Derby, Vermont, October, 1827, became blind and deaf when three years old from scrofula and abscesses in the ears. She was fourteen years old, said to be deranged at times, and was altogether a very low type of humanity when taken to the institution for the blind in Boston. She had never been controlled, and for a long time violently resisted all efforts to approach her. She made some progress during the five months she was allowed to remain there, although her ungoverned will and stolid indifference were undoubtedly serious obstacles. Anne Temmermans of Bruges, who was educated by the Abbe Carton, is another blind deaf mute who made considerable, but very slow, progress. Dr Franz Lieber, who saw her in 1844, described her as very different from the world-famed Laura Bridgman, as well in natural endowments as in cultivation of mind, and the developed state of the soul. He writes : ” I can never forget the contrast between the coarse and painful appearance of Anne and the intelligent Laura, as I have often seen her by the side of a friend, her left arm around the waist of her companion, and her right hand on the knee of the other, who was imprinting with rapidity in Laura’s open hand what she was reading in a book before them. They thus formed the personification of the great achievement which Dr Howe has gained over appalling difficulties, never overcome, and scarcely attempted to be overcome by anyone before him?the picture of a communion of minds in spite of the enduring night and deathlike silence which enwraps poor Laura?an example of the victories in store for a sincere love of our neighbour combined with sagacity, patience, resolute will, and what Locke calls ‘sound round-about common sense.’ “
Oliver Caswell was born November 1, 1829. He was a bright, healthy boy, in the full possession of all his senses, and able to prattle freely until, at the age of three years and four months, he had scarlet fever and canker-rash. At the end of four weeks he could not hear, and a few weeks later was blind. He articulated with less and less distinctness, and at the end of six months lost all power of doing so. He was in the habit of feeling his own lips and those of others when talking, probably to ascertain whether he had them in the right position. He smelt and felt everything. Whilst with his parents he had been present when a pig was killed, and taught to understand the operation! He did not enter the Boston Institution until he was twelve years old, thus many years were wasted before his education began. Still he showed much intelligence, and made fair progress, learning to read and to write child-like letters. Seeing a dog trembling with cold one chilly day, he said he would not go out. ” Walk no, rain, shake cold dog.” He is described as a noble-minded, fearless, truthful, courageous, manly boy, with a keen sense of propriety, innate honesty, and much amiability and sweetness of temper. He was skilful in mechanical employments, and readily comprehended machinery. But he had not much disposition to inquire into causes, nor any rapidity of thought and action. With a small brain, decidedly lymphatic temperament, and always slightly ailing, it is small wonder that he was often almost melancholy, and lacked keen zest and the animal spirits which force to mental activity.
Mademoiselle Morisseau, who became blind at thirteen in the Parisian Institution, is said to have been born deaf or to have become so at a very early age. The deaf and dumb Massieu taught her, she often recalled past memories, showed much curiosity, and was never weary of learning, and said, “Time passes so quickly,” or ” I am thinking of God ; He is so good.” Jane Grill, of Gosport, near Portsmouth, was born deaf, and retained a little sight until three years old, or, according to another account, until seven or eight. It was enough to carry her clear of large objects, and to make her avoid danger. Her power of distinction and memory from touch wa^ remarkable. Dr Howe, who saw her, said that she manifested clearly the possession of the germs of the reasoning faculties, that she compared things with each other, took notice of differences, and reasoned from cause to effect much more than animals and idiots. She was then about forty, and quite uneducated, but Dr Howe inferred from her general appearance, the activity of her movements, and her cranium, which was of the average size, long, rather narrow and high, that there was no constitutional incapacity for mental development. She loved life, liked eating and drinking, respected the rights of property, was fond of children, and showed social feeling generally. She measured time, cared much when young to wear pretty clothing, and to be neat as she grew older, and always went to grown-up people for everything she wanted, obeying and respecting them more than she would children. Samuel Elbridge Eames, described by Dr Thomas Whipple, a physician in Wentworth, New Hampshire, became deaf, dumb, and blind when about two years old. He was very intelligent and skilful in small mechanical feats. He died when only sixteen and a half. He had keen susceptibilities to vibration, and detected any person’s manner of opening and shutting the door by the jar which he felt; his sense of smell, too, was very acute. This latter peculiarity was also very striking in Julia Brace, who was born July 13, 1807. She was a bright, quick-tempered child, was taught to say prayers, to spell and to read words of two syllables, and went to school for a short time. When four years and five months old she had typhus fever, which, in the course of a few weeks, destroyed entirely the organs of sight and hearing, and left her such a total wreck that it was long doubtful, whether she could survive. She used speech until she could no longer recollect the positions of the different parts of the mouth and throat, and then relapsed into total silence. When thirty-five years old she was admitted to the Boston Institution, and did not appear to be a very hopeful subject for instruction. There was a certain passivity denoting habitual inattention to external objects, whicli contrasted unfavourably with Laura Bridgman, or Oliver Caswell, who seemed always on the alert, their spirits striving to get abroad. She had also been allowed to acquire a habit of sleeping or dozing for hours in the day time, which caused her to be disinclined to mental activity and incapacitated for its long continuance. She was always pleased to learn new words, but could not remember them any length of time. There had been, for too long a time, almost total inactivity of brain, and she had passed the age when the percepiive faculties are vividly and almost spontaneously at work. Of intellectual expressions she had none, only vague signs to express animal wants. She seemed to think that the tallest people ought to rule. She cared much for new clothes and dress, showed kindness to children, a feeling of propriety and sense of the rights of property. Her sense of touch was as wonderfully acute as her sense of smell; she could feel the thread as it entered the eye of a needle pressed upon her tongue. Unsuccessful attempts were made when she was in the Hartford Asylum to convey to her mind the idea of an Almighty Creator.
In the interesting account of James Mitchell, in Dugald Stewart’s works, vol. 4, we find that the lineaments of thought were very observable on his countenance. That he behaved himself with great propriety in company, owing to the extreme care of his parents and his elder sister. He loved new clothes, and thought it a great punishment to wear them torn ; he fed himself, used touch for sight, and was capable of strong family affection. When his sister meant him to understand that he should have something in two days, she shut his eyes and bent his head down twice in order to intimate to him that he must first sleep twice. He amused himself by selecting from the bed of the river stones of a round shape, nearly of the same weight and having a certain degree of smoothness. These he placed in a circular form on the bank, and then seated himself in the middle of the circle. The mother of James Mitchell discovered in his very early infancy that he was blind from his showing no desire to turn his eyes to the light, or any bright object, and afterwards that he was deaf from the circumstance that no noise, however loud, awakened him from sleep. He soon discovered a most extraordinary acuteness of the senses of touch and smell. It is said that when lie began to walk he was attracted by bright and dazzling colours, and that though he derived little information from the organ of sight, yet he received from it much sensual gratification. Although his history is destitute of many of the details which impart so thrilling and soul-stirring an interest to the lives of Laura Bridgman or Edward Meystre, it shows us the gulf which separates such an one from the idiot, and justifies the indignant protest of so great an authority as M. Blanchet against the inaptness and inaccuracy of the term ” idiocy by deprivation,” as applied to blind deaf mutes simply because they are uneducated. If the lunatic may be well compared to some noble fabric fallen into decay, giving at times sublime glimpses of its former grandeur athwart the ghastly ruins, the blind deaf mute reminds us rather of a perfect edifice with all modes of ingress and egress forgotten, and the idiot can only recall to our minds some very partially begun building suddenly blasted and thrown down by a terrific wind, or cruel bombardment of shot and shell, before the onlooker could grasp the design of the architect; the blurred outline leaving a beholder but feebly able to conceive what might have been. To imagine for a moment the contrast: could a small colony of some twenty idiots be cast adrift from an early age on a fertile uninhabited island, and an equal number of blind deaf mutes, who had lost their senses by accident or scarlet fever during the third year of life, deserted on a similar one ; the mutes would soon become wonderfully skilful in communicating with one another by touch, in process of time they would develope rude arts, and act in concert. At the same time they would doubtless appear far less rational than they really were, and it would take years of training to bring them into thorough harmony and possibility of communication with us. But the channel of intercourse once fairly established we might be amazed to find of what they had jointly been capable, whilst the idiots would miserably perish, or soon degenerate into such wild beings as we have from time to time had graphic accounts as wild boys, or wolf boys. We should behold in them beings utterly unable to act in concert, living for the most part on nuts and berries, but their diet varied by the indulgence of their strange likings for the most inedible and disgusting substances. The blind mutes would have intelligence enough to concert together, and to devise means to mutually shelter themselves from rain and storms. The idiots, with the wandering propensity strong upon them, would stand unmoved amid the biting sleet or pitiless tempest. Whereas the mutes might gradually attain to wonderful perfection in communicating by touch, the insensibility of skin of the idiot would be an insuperable barrier to this kind of communication. In fact, the very varying degrees of development of brain would separate each idiot from his fellow by a gulf almost as great as that which would exist between animals of different species.
Neglected at the age when much might have been done for them, with no wise guiding mind to’ lovingly and eagerly watch for faint glimmerings of the Grod-like, and lead them gradually and tenderly towards a faint approach to the true type of manhood, they would be indeed capable of small measure of improvement after those twenty wasted years. For the fullest details ever recorded of the life of a blind deaf mute, we must refer to Dr Howe’s reports .of Laura Dewey Bridgman; remembering that her education was begun under his immediate direction at the early age of eight, whilst Oliver Caswell was twelve, Edward Meystre eighteen and a half, and others much older before any definite attempt was made to impart to them instruction suited to their condition. Never, perhaps, has it been the lot of an obscure maiden to arouse such world-wide interest as Laura, this American girl, who was deaf, dumb, and blind. Inseparably linked with her name is that of the’ late eminent philanthropist, Dr S. Gr. Howe, who conceived and carried into execution the wonderful scheme for her education, and won by this imperishable renown in both hemispheres. Greatly it is to be regretted that he never gave to the world a complete account of her education, as her gifted teacher and biographer ; Mrs. Lamson, says that he had often intimated in conversation his intention of preparing such an account. He probably renounced it some time before his life closed, as he writes in one of his later reports: ” There will yet, perhaps, be found for her a biographer who has the qualifications necessary to gather from her story the abundant materials which it furnishes to illustrate many curious mental phenomena, and to draw from it the many beautiful moral lessons which it may be made to teach. Whatever I have written, or may write, can be regarded only as ‘ MemOires pour servir.
Laura Bridgman was born at Hanover, N.H., the 21st December, 1829. She is described as having been a very pretty and sprightly infant, with bright blue eyes, but so puny and feeble that her parents hardly hoped to rear her. Subject to severe fits, which seemed to rack her frame almost beyond its powers of endurance, life was held by the feeblest tenure. But when eighteen months old she seemed to rally, the dangerous symptoms subsided, and at twenty months she was perfectly well. She displayed, until two years and a month old, a considerable degree of intelligence, and even knew some of the letters of the alphabet. Then scarlet fever attacked her. For five months she was kept in a darkened room. A year passed before she could walk unsupported ; a year more before she could sit up all day. Her two older sisters had died of the disease, and Laura alone thus slowly fought her way back again to a life which some might have called a living death ; for sight was gone, hearing destroyed, taste blunted, and scarcely any sense of smell left. We shall never know what vague, impassioned yearnings the tiny imprisoned soul may have often sent forth during those long months of weakness, for the past bright days of sunshine and gladness, when she was so eagerly drinking in knowledge by eye and ear, as well as by touch and taste and smell. A singular feature in Laura’s whole history is the persistent way in which Dr Howe, as well as those who taught her, kept to the theory which they propounded at first, that all recollections of her babyhood were effaced, that she must begin life anew, and this in spite of the strongest evidence to show how very much she owed to the unconscious memories of those twenty-five months of enjoyment of her physical senses and powers for the form and manner of her future mental development.
It was said that she had “probably no reminiscence of sounds or of visual objects from impressions received before the attack of scarlet fever.” The only proof they seemed to find of this was her inability to recollect any words she had used, or to bring back at will any scenes of babyhood. It would be difficult in the extreme to find those in the full possession of all their faculties, who would remember words they had used before they were two years old. Thoughts may be stereotyped, but not the form in which they passed through the mind ; indeed thought and desire may be possible to a certain extent belore ihey can take form in words. The thoughts may consist of mental pictures and imagined sensations. An infant may, when seeing a dress made, feel that it is of a colour it much dislikes, and hope that some other child may have to wear it. When not allowed to wear a ribbon of its favourite colour, it may scream with passion, and thwarted self-will, although only six months old, and perhaps not able to put the thought even mentally into words ; rather would it have a gratifying mental picture of the Colour beside it, the muscles would reiterate the adjustment of a bye gone sensation, and it would feel itself touching the texture of the ribbon, and scream to find its pleasant visions and sensations recede instead of becoming realities. The dominant idea of every infant up to the age of two appears to be, ” I must try to find out all by myself.” Later on it discovers how much too slow its rate of progress will thus be, and it begins to ask questions; but before this it has formed its own opinions on many a subject. It should be remembered that during the later months that Laura was in the full possession of all her senses she was just at the age when the novelty of the sensations of hardness, pressure, weight, temperature, roughness, smoothness, slipperiness, adhesiveness, elasticity, and the like, induces the infant to bestow some considerable attention to them. Laura Bridgman had also two older sisters with whom to compare all these early impressions and sensations, thus deepening considerably their impress on the mind. After the fever her mind was evidently left clear, her intellect was keen, her memory unimpaired. Why should we not suppose that unconscious dormant memories were of even more value to her than they would have been to another individual not so exceptionally circumstanced ? Nor need this view lessen our interest in the records of her life, but rather heighten and intensify it. To those in the possession of all their faculties, it thus becomes easy to conceive her great delight at acquiring knowledge. It would seem, indeed, to have been a merciful provision that the worst sting of the poor child’s pain was gone with the loss of conscious memories. That sorrow’s crown of sorrow, the remembering happier days, had been taken out of her life, and all the unbounded capabilities of mysterious ioy at their revivification left to her to the full.
In accurately considering the gain and lasting benefit which she may have derived from those first two years, by comparing the different degrees of development attained by children endowed with all their senses, great difficulties have to be surmounted : not so much in comjDaring the degrees of knowledge then acquired but rather the variety of forms which such early knowledge assumes. And this more often through the inherited bent of each one’s character, than from the varieties of experience, and the foree of environing circumstances. How early will one infant show that it possesses a soul attuned to melody, and another that it is destitute of ear for music, although its leanings towards philosophic subtleties are very apparent. In alluding to ordinary children it may be most to the point to take as typical instances those only who are of a similar physical type to Laura Bridgman, with apparent very special hereditary predisposition to smallpox, scarlet fever, or typhus fever. Certain common features mark such children : they are usually very impressionable, vivid and emotional, and retain through all their after lives many early memories, especially if they have brothers or sis’ ers with whom to revive them. Laura lost the latter all-important channel for keeping alive conscious memories, by the death of her two elder sisters from scarlet fever at the epoch of her own illness. The keen eye of a physician might perhaps detect signs of too delicate an organisation in such children, but by the ordinary observer they would be looked upon as remarkably healthy. Possibly the chief peculiarity consists in the over-stimulating quality of the blood, and a too rapid cerebral circulation. They are a type quite distinct from the precocious child with consumptive or scrofulous tendencies. It would not appear that if they live their breadth of intellectual grasp is specially narrowed, or in any sense diminished, by the too early development of their moral and emotional natures. The chief danger appears to be to life itself when fever attacks them. Then the brain, especially if it has been unduly taxed, and the child allowed to greedily drink in on all sides the knowledge it so craves, seems peculiarly ready to take deeply into the circulation the deadly fever poison, and speedily acute delirium and deadly coma ensue. If the intellectual powers have not been strained in this way, death itself may even have been said to have taken place, and yet the child will strugg1 back to life, and survive for many years with its mental and physical powers unimpaired.
The normal infant of two is not capable of the higher or intellectual emotions, nor has it as yet either any power of intellectual perception, synthesis, and induction, or the power of uniting intellectual apprehensions into an explicit affirmation or negation. All other intellectual powers in it probably differ only in degree?not in kind?from those of the adult. It has sufficient power of abstraction to reason from cause to effect, self-consciousness, and reflection; it shows intellectual memory by actively searching for and so recalling past thoughts or experiences ; also intellectual analysis, deduction, and ratiocination ; and to some extent intellectual intuition and rational language. It also possesses a power of, on certain occasions, deliberately electing to act?or to abstain from acting?either with or in opposition to the resultant of involuntary attractions and repulsions. It can intellectually apprehend the relations between objects and perceive their being. It intentionally seeks to recollect. It can draw attention to its feelings and emotions, and deliberately choose to sacrifice an immediate sensual gratification for the sake of more prolonged pleasure of another kind. It not only feels, but has self-conscious thought to know that it is feeling, and even to be aware and able to describe afterwards its very inadequate powers of expressing feelings of pain or sentiments of affection. For reliable observations of this kind it is sometimes best to watch for chance intimations from children themselves after intervals of about a year. Such spontaneous accounts being less likely to be distorted than the revived memories of adults after the lapse of many years. A child, not three years old, who described the grief it felt a year before when ill at having made its mother think it only cared “for its nurse, was probably ignorant of the conflict it had gone through between the desire to show affection for its mother and the sense of physical well being which induced it to prefer to be in the nurse’s arms. It only retained the memory of the pain it had felt at fancying itself misunderstood.
There is a wonderful analogy to be traced between the earliest mental efforts of the blind deaf mute and the mental processes of the lowest races of men as well as of infants. This may be noticed especially with regard to number and time. Sir Samuel Baker, who has never visited any savage tribe who had not numerals, says that: ” They usually count in tens, taking for the base of their calculations their digits, which appear to be the original root of numbers.” Mr. Galt.on, in ” Tropical Africa,” says that the Damnaras are unable to count further than three, and consequently have no numerals in their language. If they lose an ox they miss a face they know, rather than find out that the herd is diminished. Yet this power of counting up to three is rather significant of a more primitive mental operation with regard to numbers. Dr Wilbur gives an instance of it in an idiot ten years old who could obey a few simple commands and had learnt the name? of a few familiar objects. He was taught the first ideas of number before the names of the numbers were imparted. I)r. Wilbur says: ” I found him one day, to my surprise, stringing thirty-five black and white beads alternately,” the size of the beads varying. “I found on still further examination that number was comprehended to the extent mentioned without language.” This power of grouping objects visually or mentally into two twos or three threes is often intuitively possessed by infants at the age of nine months. An infant who did this with its ninepins at ten months, tried, when eighteen months old, to draw with a pencil a dog, and on being asked which were the legs, indicated four scrawled lines, saying, ” There they are, two-ey, two-ey ; one-ey, two-ey; one-ey, two-ey.” Another infant, at the same age, said one-another for one-two and another-another for twice two. This incomplete comprehension of numbers seems to be much the earliest of which the infant is capable, and precedes, by many months, knowledge of the simplest operations of arithmetic, or even the ability to really count. Yet if the old familiar story of the crows be based on fact, it goes considerably beyond their power of counting, as they could count three only, but not groups of threes. Oliver Caswell counted fifty on his fingers, but always ” fived,” reckoning, for instance, eighteen objects as both hands one hand three fingers. Counting by twenties?all the fingers and toes?is said, by Tylor, to be a strongly-marked Celtic characteristic, which breaks out through the decimal coinage system in France. Among Australian tribes addition makes two-one, and two-two express three, and four; in Guachi twotwo is four; in San Antonio four and two-one is seven ; in a Tupi dialect two-three is used to express six; West African negroes reckon with pebbles or nuts, and every time they come to five, put them aside in a little heap. The Gruaranis count up to four with their native numerals, and when they get beyond, say innumerable, like children who glibly talk of ” thousands.”
Just as the lowest races of men identify intervals of time only by migrations of animals and the flowering of plants, &c., so children, during the second year of life, connect the seasons with primroses, violets, roses, the falling of the leaves, and snow. Laura Bridgman was pretty accurate in measuring time, and seemed to have an intuitive tendency to do it. She reckoned time by the Sundays, saying September 9, 1841, “I will go home after six Sundays”; to express an indefinitely great number she said, ” hundred ” ; if she thought a friend was to be absent many years, she would say, ” Will come again hundred Sundays,” meaning weeks. The same infant who described four as two-ey, two-ey, reckoned in sevens?seven?fourteen?twentyone, at three years old. Its mental operations with regard to time, when little more than two, and ignorant of the names of the days of the week, was to assign to each Sunday a yesterday, a day before yesterday, a day before the two yesterdays, a tomorrow, a day after to-morrow, and a day after the two to-morrows; thus the Thursday in last week was described as ” last Sunday’s day before the two yesterdays,” and a month hence as the time when those four next Sundays with all their yesterdays and to-morrows have gone by. This child could not learn, without an undesirable mental effort, to connect the arbitrary names of the days with the inner mental conception of them until some months later. No doubt many other children might realise in a similar way the lapse of time, and give no evidence of the fact. Just as defective intelligence is not to be inferred from defects in the organs of sense, so the measure of the early development of those organs is not necessarily the measure of intelligence. For whilst it is very doubtful whether the powers of speech of an infant ever keep pace by any means with its ideas, it is quite certain that its power of thought bears no constant proportion to its power of expression. It would be indeed difficult to reconcile purely materialistic views of the origin of language with the mental processes of infants or blind deaf mutes. On all sides are we confronted with the inner form of language, the ” mental word,” as generating and preceding the power of making those thoughts intelligible to another. Very great conscious effort is no doubt made by the infant in the acquirement of language, but the effort is an intensely pleasurable one. The power of an emotional stimulus in resuscitating the previously dormant faculty of articulate language has been often dwelt upon. A remarkable instance where the sudden stimulus to speech, after thirteen years of mutism consequent on fever, seemed purely volitional, occurred some years since in a London institution for the blind. No account of it has ever been published so far as the writer is aware. A boy, in the full possession of all his senses, became blind and deaf from fever at the age of twelve; as his parents were very poor, little attention was bestowed upon him, and he became dumb and remained absolutely so for more than thirteen }rears. After this period, whilst at the institution, he one day caught hold of a key and called out its name. After this he was taught to speak, could repeat two hundred hymns, and learnt to read the raised letters quite as well as any of the other inmates. May it not be that in the case of those who lose their senses at a very early age, a somewhat analogous process may go on ? May not the sense of touch open up in a marvellous way long obstructed paths of association in the brain, and give the power of imagining bye-gone sensations ? Thus the child would derive much benefit from what it has seen and heard when in the full possession of all its senses, and the ideas of sound be made possible, although the perceptions of it were irrevocably lost. Laura surprised her teachers by using the letter 0 when s was exhausted. May not this same tactile channel be alone necessary to recall former knowledge as visual also, so that, although the blind mute cannot by willing it raise in his mind the long bye-gone sensations, and only remembers unconsciously much that he has seen and heard, yet the effect of the sense of touch, heightened by attention, volition and the exertion of mental effort, blends the memories of the past with the achievements of the present, and makes possible a degree of moral and intellectual development which could not otherwise be attained ? When Laura was eleven and a-half she began to ask the colour of everything, and her teachers say that they could not discover where she got the first idea of it; for two days she was so much interested that she would have liked to devote her whole lesson to it; she had also attached an idea of inferiority to red. An unsuccessful effort was made by questioning to trace the origin of her dislike, and it was surmised that the article she had in her hand when first told of the colour red may have been harsh and disagreeable to the touch. Must we not, remembering that the perception of colour is oneof the earliest of which an infant is capable, go farther back for a true explanation of this ? It is so painful during fever, especially scarlet fever, to see anything red, that perhaps a permanent dislike to the colour may be sometimes left. Later on a lesson led to the subject of the Erie Canal and Niagara Falls.
” It might be supposed,” writes her biographer, ” that they would be m^re commonplace topics to her, and that the most vivid description could not convey to one who had never even seen water the faintest idea of their beauty and grandeur. Just what ideas she did receive it is impossible for us to know, and also the cause of the excitement she manifested when told about them.” When, in 1855, Laura was asked to write an account of her life at home before she came to the institution, she savs: ” I flinged sand, stones, and gravels, and branches of aged trees into the brook. I enjoyed that game exceedingly.” To quote again from the journals of her teachers. ” I asked her about the steam from a kettle over the fire ; at first she seemed to know nothing about it, but suddenly the memory of a burn she got from it when a little girl came to her, and after that she understood it. She told me that she had seen her father ‘ burn short trees’ in the ground (meaning stumps, I presume), and asked why he wanted to do it. From time to time some conversation seems to suggest things which she knew about when living at home, and we see by her questions how much she observed and thought wonderingly about.” She told for the first time on February 27th, 1842, another story of her early childhood, and on another occasion showed how young lambs had been placed by her mother in a basket, and wanted to know why they were covered over with a blanket. Although she usually dreamt that she talked with her fingers, she once dreamt that she talked with her mouth, and at another time that she saw with her eyes.
She sought to trace back all to a First Cause, asking: “Water is very strong; who made water? Who put fishes in water? Why do sun not come??Because clouds are over it. Who shut clouds ? ” She was much troubled by mosquitoes and asked at a later period of her history : ” Why did God make mosquitoes to bite us?” An idea of resurrection was gleaned by her from observing Nature. Speaking of a lady who has died, and whom she saw in Hanover two years ago, she said : ” Will Mrs. M. come back when sun is warm ? Where is Mrs M. ? Are you sorry not to see Mrs. M.” The next day she asked : “Where are the flies gone?” I told her the cold made the Hies die. ” Will flies come when warm ? “?Yes. ” I am sorry lady will not come when warm.” Meystre’s instructors also found in him the idea of resurrection without knowing how lie obtained it. He showed boundless satisfaction at having learnt the name of God. He found it so natural that everything should have an author that he did not seem surprised at the power of G-od.
I)r. Howe has said in one of his reports, that ” the teacher plays a much humbler part in the intellectual development of children than he is usually supposed to do.” It is certainly not a little curious to find, in how many small details, the spontaneous acts and thoughts of both Meystre and Laura were precisely those of very young ordinary children. Laura enacted very complete dramas with her dolls, and turned round the faces of a monkey and little dog belonging to her ” to have them see the pictures on the wall,” just as an only child of two. or one, isolated through weakness and illness, usually would. However fluently the latter may talk, it will appear intensely mortified when it first hears a parrot speak, and be only consoled by finding that it is incapable of thought. This is a subject on which Laura is described as ” somewhat sensitive; for it is a singular fact that, while she expresses no feeling that men, women, and children can talk and she cannot, she always feels it when she hears of any of the lower animals speaking or hearing.” She supposed a monkey could talk, and when told he could not, she looked as if much relieved, though she asked immediately if he could see. An ordinary child of three will say with astonishment, on seeing for the first time some nearly imbecile child, that ” it looks only half-alive.” Laura always regarded with contempt those weak in intellect, and recognised the fact by a muscular intuition. Her biographer says: “There was at one time in the house a very gentlemanly young man who was not blind. He was well dressed, and his appearance did not betray the deficiency of intellect which really existed. Laura had not met him until the day he was introduced to her. He could not speak with Ids fingers, so it was merely a shaking of hands that passed between them. Instantly after she dropped his hand she raised hers, letting the fingers hang down, and said to the person who introduced her, ” Is he a fool ? ” Meystre, too, estimated a man by the force of his mind, and the sagacity he showed in this respect was surprising. Whilst his instructor was one day occupied in attempting to teach a young blind and deaf mute girl to speak, Meystre remarked, with a sign of contempt, that she had no intelligence, and that nothing could be done. But after a moment of reflection, this contempt changed to sadness. “Jeanne does not think of God,” he said, locking his hands on his heart in sign of sorrow. He reflected again; the convulsive movements of his lips announced that his mind was painfully occupied. The physiognomy again changed ; suddenly beaming with joy, he rose and repeated: ” Jeanne does not think of God, but God thinks of her, and that is enough.” A singular blending of ideas of a Creating Deity with the benign influences of the sun in nature may be often found in children before they are three years old. Their fancy figures the golden glory of rays of sunshine as the very pathway from heaven to earth. A child in the most dolorous stage of mumps will exclaim, “Oh God,come down from heaven above and help us children here, for we have no light without the sun or moon or stars!” Another, given to doggerel rhyming, will say, ” Back to his heaven our God is going, now the dull evening is drawing nigh, God who is tender, merciful, loving, to us all on the earth below the sky, for now that thp golden sun is setting 011 this the best, brightest happiest day. God is still watching over our windows, God is nevermore very far away.” Laura asked ” Can God be at the sun ? ” Meystre, finding the blind pupils one evening with their hands clasped in prayer, asked one of them if they were speaking to the sun. Religious ideas had been up to this time carefully avoided in his lessons. He had great respect for the sun on account of its agreeable and beneficent heat, and expressed boundless satisfaction at having learnt the name of God as the creator of the sun. He found it so natural that everything should have an author, that he was less surprised at the power of God than at the impotence of the miller who could not make the grain. He said, ” Man thinks. Things which do not live do not think. The man who prays thinks of God.” He began to pray in the evening tefore retiring to rest, repeating many times the words, ” I am thinking of Grod.” He was one day found occupied in concentrating the rays of the sun with a lens, and as his hand was touched, he said, ” Jejoense aDieu.” Acting on some such apparently innate tendencies in the child to seek a Creator through his works, Dr Howe was most anxious to let the mind of Laura Bridgman have its due period of infancy in religious ideas, although it was necessarily a prolonged period, because she seemed, in many respects, like a child of three when really fourteen. Dr Howe could only compare her knowledge of language when fifteen years old, after she had been seven years under instruction, to that of a child of six. He compared her when she was ten years old to a child of three. He encountered not a little opposition and much animadversion on account of his strongly expressed wish that Laura’s religious education should be so long deferred. It might be that he was to some extent unconsciously biased by his own phase of religious thought, but it seems difficult to conceive that without this gradual and harmonious development of the mental powers, Laura Bridgman would ever have been capable of the wonderful grasp of religious truths so ably described in the latter part of her biography, and shown in her letters. Dr Lieber quotes from the Eighteenth Report to the Trustees of the Perkin’s Institution for the Blind, Boston, 1850, where it is recorded that Laura often says, in the fulness of her heart, ” I am so glad I have been created.” This psalm of gratitude poured forth by her whom we pity as the loneliest of mortals ?this hymn of rejoicing in the possession of life? expresses infinitely more strongly and loudly what Dr Howe has done for her than any praise of others could do. A gleam of sunshine on her face, a warm south wind, the soft grass under her feet, a growing plant or an opening flower, any of these things awaken a feeling of pleasure, and often lead her thoughts upwards to Him who created them.
Very much may doubtless be done for every blind deaf mute in brightening his existence and ameliorating his so sad, sightless, speechless, soundless lot. But it would appear that, although the instances of the most successful education ot blind deaf mutes are glorious examples of what scienceand philanthropy can, hand-in-hand, achieve; and whilst they indicate the inestimable value of the earliest months and years of life in the mental and moral development of every human being, they yet give no warrant for supposing that the efforts of the philanthropist can ever be rewarded with any such brilliant success in the case of the congenital blind deaf mute.
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