Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/189

Rh hands; there remain to him only the eyes. He can not, then, learn to speak or to write. Could we teach him to read; and to what extent? The question comes back in a manner to this: Could we teach an armless mute, not deaf, to read? I think it would be a more formidable task than was that of teaching Laura Bridgman.

Under the old way it was very hard to teach children to read, even with the help of hearing, the sight, and the voice. We showed them the letter A, pronounced it, and made them repeat it; then we passed to the letter E, and so on. At the end of a year the most intelligent, at the end of two years less bright, ones were able to attach a determined sound to certain shapes, that is, when we bring it down to the final analysis, to certain conscious motions of the eyes. After that we taught them writing.

Not a great while ago a pedagogue was struck with an inspiration of genius. It occurred to him to teach reading and writing together. At first sight it seemed absurd to think of simplifying reading by adding writing to it. But what was the outcome of his plan? Why, that now, children, in the course of three months, and with much less difficulty and without help from the application of the ruler to their fingers, learn to read and write with much greater facility and correctness than they formerly could in three years.

This comes from the fact that the motions of the hand are associated with those of the eyes, and the form of the letters is thus engraved upon the memory by means of two different instruments, and therefore much more quickly, one assisting the other; and because the other associations of prolonged sound and articulate sound with that form have become surer and more rapid.

Would it be possible, by showing him the letter A, to make a mute, not deaf but armless, understand that the sign corresponds with a sound? Evidently the experiment would not succeed. We might with patience teach him to kneel, to get up, to walk, or to make certain gestures as we show him certain figures. We could do this with the mute more easily than with the dog, because we could exemplify the movement to him, and because also, imperfect as he is, he is a man and not a brute. He would also attach the same meaning to the pronounced sound, and would thus learn that the written sign A answers exactly to the sound A, as he would obey orders given by the voice, and we would be able to say that he understood language. He might also, if we put the alphabet at his command, manifest his wishes by indicating the sign corresponding with them, and we might be able to say that he had a language. Possibly we might be able to go further still, and train him to the point of interpreting the design; but I do not hazard much in saying that his education would still leave an enormous amount to be desired. It is very hard to make a great scholar even out of a deaf-mute who has arms and has learned to speak, and Sandersons are exceedingly rare.