Page:The education of the deaf and dumb practically considered.djvu/6

 of attaining knowledge—susceptible of the same passions and feelings, animated by the same likes and dislikes, and influenced by the selfsame impulses of nature. They have, moreover, proved that, in regard to good or evil, and the spiritual life to come, he is an accountable being, with full possession of all the intellectual qualifications and attributes of mankind, only in a torpid or undeveloped state. A systematic education, judiciously administered and efficiently carried out, will, as it were, not only germinate this mind, but rouse these individual faculties into action, and tend to train both it and them in such a manner as will rescue this benighted child from the dark Cimmerian existence in which he normally dwells, and place him side by side of ourselves—the hearing—in the bright dawning of human intelligence and reason."

Notwithstanding these facts, the same author informs us—"Out of 22,000 deaf and dumb persons living at this very time in Great Britain, about 1,650 only are under any kind of instruction."

Shut out from the enjoyments of social intercourse, debarred as they are from so much which makes life’s pathway less rugged, there yet lies within their reach, if we will but hold it out to them, the wide field of literature.

What shall hinder—surely, not the niggard hand, or sluggard mind of the more richly endowed—the bestowing on them a boon, which, if it cannot compensate, shall, at least, alleviate a condition "no sin" of theirs brought forth?

The first object of the instructor must be the imparting of language, it matters not (unless as concerns their physical health) whether it be articulate, manual, or