Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/77

Rh find out nothing about him, so they sent him to the deaf-and-dumb Institution, where he was taught. When he had been sufficiently educated to enable him to give accurate answers to questions put to him, he gave an account of what he remembered of his life previously to his coming to the Institution. His father, he said, had a mill, and of this mill, the furniture of the house, and the country round it, he gave a precise description. He gave a circumstantial account of his life there, how his mother and sister died, his father married again, his step- mother ill-treated him, and he ran away. He did not know his own name, nor what the mill was called, but he knew it lay away from Prague towards the morning. On inquiry being made, the boy's statement was confirmed. The police found his home, gave him his name, and secured his inheritance for him.

Even Laura Bridgman, who was blind as well as deaf-and-dumb, expressed her feelings by the signs we all use, though she had never seen them made, and could not tell that the bystanders could observe them. She would stamp with delight, and shudder at the idea of a cold bath. When astonished, she would protrude her lips, and hold up her hands with fingers wide spread out, and she might be seen "biting her lips with an upward contraction of the facial muscles when roguishly listening at the account of some ludicrous mishap, precisely as lively persons among us would do." While speaking of a person, she would point to the spot where he had been sitting when she last conversed with him, and where she still believed him to be.

Though, however, the deaf-and-dumb prove clearly to us that a man may have human thought without being able to speak, they by no means prove that he can think without any means of physical expression. Their evidence tends the other way. We may read with profit an eloquent passage on this subject by a German professor, as, transcendental as it is, it is put in such clear terms, that we may almost think we understand it.

"Herein lies the necessity of utterance, the representation of