Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/238

226 the more recently developed, faculties should be the first to disappear, while those faculties which man shares with the lower animals should be the most persistent. And this expectation I have found to be fairly well realized. Beginning from below, the first dawn of intelligence in the ascending scale of idiots, as in the ascending scale of animals, is invariably to be found in the power of associating simple concrete ideas. Thus, there are very few idiots so destitute of intelligence that the appearance of food does not arouse in their minds the idea of eating; and, as we ascend in the scale idiotic, we find the principle of association progressively extending its influence, so that the mind is able, not only to establish a greater and greater number of special associations, but also to retain these associations with an ever-increasing power of memory. In the case of the higher idiots, as in the case of the higher animals, it is surprising in how considerable a degree the faculty of special association is developed, notwithstanding the dwarfed condition of all the higher faculties. Thus, for instance, it is not a difficult matter to teach a clever idiot to play dominos, in the same way as a clever dog has been taught to play dominos, viz., by teaching special associations between the optical appearances of the facets which the game requires to be brought together. But the idiot may be quite as unable as the dog to play at any game which involves the understanding of a simple rationale, such, for instance, as draughts. And, similarly, many of the higher idiots have been taught to recognize, by special association, the time on a watch; but it is remarkable that the high power of forming special associations which this fact implies occurs in the same minds which are unable to perform so simple a calculation as this: If it is ten minutes to three, how many minutes is it past two? Thus it will be seen that among idiots, as among animals, the faculty of forming special associations between concrete ideas attains a comparatively high degree of development. Let us then next turn to the faculties of abstraction and reason. Prepared as I was to expect these faculties to be the most deficient, I have been greatly surprised at the degree in which they are so. As regards the power of forming abstract ideas which depend on the logic of signs, it is only among the very highest class of idiots that any such power is apparent at all; and even here it is astonishing in how very small a degree this power is exhibited. There seems, for instance, to be an almost total absence of the idea of right and wrong as such; so that the faculty of conscience, properly so called, can rarely be said to be present. Most of the higher idiots, indeed, experience a feeling of remorse on offending the sympathies of those whom they love, just as did my dog on tearing the window-curtains; but I have been able to obtain very little evidence of any true idiot whose action is prompted by any idea of right and wrong in the abstract, or as apart from the idea of approbation and disapprobation of those whose good feeling he values.

Again, the faculty of reason is dwarfed to the utmost—so much so,