Page:Opening of the Connecticut Asylum Sermon 1817.djvu/6

 The instruction of the deaf and dumb, if properly conducted, has a tendency to give important aid to many researches of the philanthropist, the philosopher, and the divine.—The philanthropist and the philosopher are deeply interested in the business of education. The cultivation of the human mind is paramount to all other pursuits; inasmuch as spirit is superior to matter, and eternity to time. Youth, is the season in which the powers of the mind begin to develope themselves, and language, the grand instrument by which this developement is to take place. Now it is beyond all doubt, that great improvement has been made in the mode of instructing children in the use and power of language. To what extent these improvements may yet be carried, time alone can determine. The very singular condition in which the minds of the deaf and dumb are placed, and the peculiar means which are necessarily employed in their instruction, may furnish opportunities for observation and experiment, and the establishment of principles, with regard to the education of youth, which will not be without essential service in their general application. How much light also, may in this way, be thrown upon what are supposed to be the original truths, felt and recognised to be such by the mind, without any reasoning process. Many speculations, too, which now are obscure and unsettled, respecting the faculties of the human mind, may be rendered more clear and satisfactory. How many questions, also, may be solved, concerning the capability of man to originate of himself, the notion of a God and of a future state, or, admitting his capacity to do this, whether, as a matter of fact, he ever would do it. What discoveries may be made respecting the original notions of right and wrong, the obligations of conscience, and, indeed, most of the similar topics connected with the moral sense. These hints are sufficient to show, that aside from the leading and more important uses of giving instruction to the deaf and dumb, their education might be made to subserve the general cause of humanity, and of correct Philosophy and Theology.