To the most religious of philanthropists is France indebted for this
sublime discovery, and the Abbé SICARD, a pupil of the inventor; the
Abbé de l'Epée, has carried it to such a degree of perfection, that
it scarcely appears possible to make any further progress in so
useful an undertaking. And, in fact, what can be wanting to a species
of instruction the object of which is to establish between the deaf
and dumb, and the man who hears and speaks, a communication like that
established between all men by the knowledge and practice of the same
idiom; when the deaf and dumb man, by the help of the education given
him, succeeds in decomposing into phrases the longest period; into
simple propositions, the most complex phrase; into words, each
proposition; into simple words, words the most complex: and when he
distinguishes perfectly words derived from primitives; figurative
words from proper ones; and when, after having thus decomposed the
longest discourse, he recomposes it; when, in short, the deaf and
dumb man expresses all his ideas, all his thoughts, and all his
affections; when he answers, like men the best-informed, all
questions put to him, respecting what he knows through the nature of
his intelligence, and respecting what he has learned, either from
himself or from him who has enlightened his understanding? What wish
remains to be formed, when the deaf and dumb man is enabled to learn
by himself a foreign language, when he translates it, and writes it,
as well as those of whom it is the mother-tongue?
Such is the phenomenon which the Institution of the deaf and dumb
presents to the astonishment of Europe, under the direction, or
rather under the regeneration of the successor of the celebrated Abbé
de l'Epée. His pupils realize every thing that I have just mentioned.
They write English and Italian as well as they do French. Nothing
equals the justness and precision of their definitions.
Nor let it be imagined that they resemble birds repeating the tunes
they have learned. Never have they been taught the answer to a
question. Their answers are always the effect of their good logic,
and of the ideas of objects and of qualities of beings, acquired by a
mind which the Institutor has formed from the great art of
observation.
This institution was far short of its present state of perfection at
the death of the celebrated inventor, which happened on the 23d of
December 1789. During the long career of their first father, the deaf
and dumb had been able to find means only to write, under the
dictation of signs, words whose import was scarcely known to them.
When endeavours were made to make them emerge from the confined
sphere of the first wants, not one of them knew how to express in
writing any thing but ideas of sense and wants of the first
necessity. The nature of the verb, the relations of tenses, that of
other words comprehended in the phrase, and which form the syntax of
languages, were utterly unknown to them. And, indeed, how could they
answer the most trifling question? Every thing in the construction of
a period was to them an enigma.
It was not long before the successor of the inventor discovered the
defect of this instruction, which was purely mechanical and acquired
by rote. He thought he perceived this defect in the _concrete_ verb,
in which the deaf and dumb, seeing only a single word, were unable to
distinguish two ideas which are comprehended in it, that of
affirmation and that of quality. He thought he perceived also that
defect in the expression of the qualities, always presented, in all
languages, out of the subjects, and never in the noun which they
modify; and, by the help of a process no less simple than ingenious
and profound, he has made the deaf and dumb comprehend the most
arduous difficulty, the nature of abstraction; he has initiated them
in the art of generalizing ideas by presenting to them the adjective
in the noun, as the quality is in the object, and the quality
subsisting alone and out of the object, having no support but in the
mind, for him who considers it, and but in the abstract noun for him
who reads the expression of it. He has, in like manner, separated the
verb from the quality in concrete verbs, and communicated to the deaf
and dumb the knowledge of the true verb, which he has pointed out to
them in the termination of all the French verbs, by reattaching to
the subject, by a line agreed on, its verbal quality. This line he
has translated by the verb _to be_, the only verb recognized by
philosophic grammarians.
These are the two foundations of this very extraordinary source of
instruction, and on which all the rest depend. The pronouns are
learned by nouns; the tenses of conjugation, by the three absolute
tenses of conjugation of all languages; and these, by this line, so
happily imagined, which is a sign of the present when it connects the
verbal quality and the subject, a sign of the past when it is
intersected, a sign of the future when it is only begun.
All the conjugations are reduced to a single one, as are all the
verbs. The adverbs considered as adjectives, when they express the
manner, and as substitutes for a preposition and its government, when
they express time or place, &c. The preposition represented as a mean
of transmitting the influence of the word which precedes it to that
which follows it; the articles serving, as in the English language,
to determine the extent of a common noun. Such is a summary of the
grammatical system of the Institutor of the deaf and dumb.
It is the metaphysical part, above all, which, in this institution,
is carried to such a degree of simplicity and clearness, that it is
within reach of understandings the most limited. And, indeed, one
ought not to be astonished at the rapid progress of the deaf and dumb
in the art of expressing their ideas and of communicating in writing
with every speaker, as persons absent communicate with each other by
similar means. In the space of eighteen months, a pupil begins to
give an account in writing of the actions of which he is rendered a
witness, and, in the space of five years, his education is complete.
The objects in which the deaf and dumb are instructed, are Grammar,
the notions of Metaphysics and Logic, which the former renders
necessary, Religion, the Use of the Globes, Geography, Arithmetic,
general notions of History, ancient and modern, of Natural History,
of Arts and Trades, &c.
These unfortunates, restored by communication to society, from which
Nature seemed to have intended to exclude them, are usefully
employed. One of their principal occupations is a knowledge of a
mechanical art. Masters in the most ordinary arts are established in
the house of the deaf and dumb, and every one there finds employment
in the art which best suits his inclination, his strength, and his
natural disposition. In this school, which is established at the
extremity of the _Faubourg St. Jacques_, is a printing-office, where
some are employed as compositors; others, as pressmen. In a
preparatory drawing-school they are taught the rudiments of painting,
engraving, and Mosaic, for the last of which there are two workshops.
There is also a person to teach engraving on fine grained stones, as
well as a joiner, a tailor, and a shoemaker. The garden, which is
large, is cultivated by the deaf and dumb. Almost every thing that is
used by them is made by themselves. They make their own bedsteads,
chairs, tables, benches, and clothes. The deaf and dumb females too
make their shirts, and the rest of their linen.
Thus their time is so taken up that, with the exception of three
hours devoted to moral instruction, all the rest is employed in
manual labour.
Such is this establishment, where the heart is agreeably affected at
the admirable spectacle which presents at once every thing that does
the most honour to human intelligence, in the efforts which it has
been necessary to make in order to overcome the obstacles opposed to
its development by the privation of the sense the most useful, and
that of the faculty the most essential to the communication of men
with one another, and the sight of the physical power employed in
seeking, in arts and trades, resources which render men independent.
But to what degree are these unfortunates deaf, and why are they
dumb?
It is well known that they are dumb because they are deaf, and they
are more or less deaf, when they are so only by accident, in
proportion as the auditory nerve is more or less braced, or more or
less relaxed. In various experiments made on sound, some have heard
sharp sounds, and not grave ones; others, on the contrary, have heard
grave sounds, and not sharp ones.
All would learn, were it deemed expedient to teach them, the
mechanism of speech. But, besides that the sounds which they would
utter, would never be heard by themselves, and they would never be
conscious of having uttered them, those, sounds would be to those who
might listen to them infinitely disagreeable. Never could they be of
use, to them in conversing with us, and they would serve only to
counteract their instruction.
Woe be to the deaf and dumb whom it should be proposed to instruct by
teaching them to speak! How, in fact, can, the development of the
understanding be assisted by teaching them a mechanism which has no
object or destination, when the thought already formed in the mind,
by the help of signs which fix the ideas, restores not the mechanism
of speech?
Of this the Institutor has been fully sensible, and, although in his
public lessons, he explains all the efforts of the vocal instrument
or organ of the voice, and proves that he could, as well as any other
man, teach the deaf and dumb to make use of it, all his labour is
confined to exercising the instrument of thought, persuaded that
every thing will be obtained, when the deaf and dumb shall have
learned to arrange their ideas, and to think.
It is then only that the Institutor gives lessons of analysis. But,
how brilliant are they! You think yourself transported into a class
of logic. The deaf and dumb man has ceased to be so. A contest begins
between him and his master. All the spectators are astonished; every
one wishes to retain what is written on both sides. It is a lesson
given to all present.
Every one is invited to interrogate the deaf and dumb man, and he
answers to any person whatsoever, with a pen or pencil in his hand,
and in the same manner puts a question. He is asked, "What is Time?"
--"Time," says the dumb pupil, "is a portion of duration, the nature
of which is to be successive, to have commenced, and consequently to
have passed, and to be no more; to be present, and to be so through
necessity. Time," adds he, "is the fleeting or the future." As if in
the eyes of the dumb there was nothing real in Time but the future.
--"What is eternity?" says another to him--"It is a day without
yesterday, or to-morrow," replies the pupil.--"What is a sense?"--"It
is a vehicle for ideas."--"What is duration?"--"It is a line which
has no end, or a circle."--"What is happiness?"--"It is a pleasure
which never ceases."--"What is God?"--"The author of nature, the sun
of eternity."--"What is friendship?"--"The affection of the mind."
--"What is gratitude?"--"The memory of the heart."
There are a thousand answers of this description, daily collected at
the lessons of the deaf and dumb by those who attend them, and which
attest the superiority of this kind of instruction over the common
methods. Thus, this institution is not only, in regard to beneficence
and humanity, deserving of the admiration of men of feeling, it
merits also the observation of men of superior understanding and true
philosophers, on account of the ingenious process employed here to
supply the place of the sense of seeing by that of hearing, and
speech by gesture and writing.
I must not conceal from my countrymen, above all, that the
Institutor, in his public lessons, formally declares, that it is by
giving to the French language the simple form of ours, and
accommodating to it our syntax, he has been chiefly successful in
making the deaf and dumb understand that of their own country. I must
also add, that it is no more than a justice due to the Institutor to
say that, in the midst of the concourse of auditors, who press round
him, and who offer him the homage due to his genius and philanthropy,
he shews for all the English an honourable preference, acknowledging
to them, publicly, that this attention is a debt which he discharges
in return for the asylum that we granted to the unfortunate persons
of his profession, who, emigrating from their native land, came among
us to seek consolation, and found another home.
Should ever this feeble sketch of so interesting an institution reach
SICARD, that religious philosopher, who belongs as much to every
country in the world as to France, the land which gave him birth, he
will find in it nothing more than the expression of the gratitude of
one Englishman; but he may promise himself that as soon as the
definitive treaty of peace shall have reopened a free intercourse
between the two nations, the sentiments contained in it will be
adopted by all the English who shall witness the extraordinary
success of his profoundly-meditated labours. They will all hasten to
pay their tribute of admiration to a man, whose most gratifying
reward consists in the benefits which he has had the happiness to
confer on that part of his fellow-creatures from whom Nature has
withheld her usual indulgence.