Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/239

Rh that the investigator is most of all astonished at the poverty of rational power which may be displayed by a human mind that in most other respects seems well developed. I can only wait to give you one example, but it may be taken as typical. A boy fourteen years of age, belonging to the highest class of undoubted idiots, could scarcely be called feeble-minded as regarded many of his faculties. Thus, for instance, his powers of memory were above the average, so that he had no difficulty in learning Latin, French, etc. Moreover, he could tell you by mental calculation the product of two numbers into two numbers, such as 35 by 35, or of one number into three numbers, such as number of days in nine years. His powers of mental calculation were therefore quite equal to those of any average boy of his age. Yet he was not able to answer any question that involved the simplest act of reason. Thus, when I asked him how many sixpences there are in a sovereign, he was quite unable to answer. Although he knew that there are two sixpences in a shilling, and twenty shillings in a sovereign, and could have immediately have said that twice twenty are forty, yet he could not perform the simple act of inference which the question involved. Again, I asked him, if he could buy oranges at a farthing each, how many he could he buy for twopence? He thought long and hard, saying, "I know that four farthings make a penny, and the oranges cost a farthing each; then how many could I buy for twopence? Ah! that's the question, and there's just the puzzle." Nor was he able by the utmost effort to solve the puzzle. This boy had a very just appreciation of his own physiological character. Alluding to his power of forming special associations and retaining them in his excellent memory, he observed: "Once put anything into my head and you don't get it out again very easily; but there's no use in asking me to do puzzles."

Lastly, the emotional life of all the higher idiots, as of all the higher animals, is remarkably vivid as compared with their intellectual life. All the emotions are present (except, perhaps, that of the sublime and the religious emotions), and they occur for the most part in the same order as to strength as that which I have already named in the case of animals. But, more than this, just as in animals, children, and savages, so in idiots, the emotions, although vivid and keen, are not profound. A trivial event will make the higher idiots laugh or cry, and it is easy to hurt their feelings with a slight offense; but the death of a dear relative is very soon forgotten, while the stronger passions, such as love, hate, ambition, etc., do not occur with that force and persistency which properly entitle them to be called by these names.

Upon the whole, then, with regard to idiots, it may be said that we have in them a natural experiment wherein the development of a human mind is arrested at some particular stage, while the body is allowed to continue its growth. Therefore, by arranging idiots in a descending