the gifted human child in the society of human beings--_even before he
has learned to speak_. When he has learned to speak, then the gap widens
to such an extent that what before was in some respects almost the
equal of humanity seems now a repulsive caricature of it.

In order, then, to understand the real difference between brute and man,
it is necessary to ascertain how a child and a brute animal may have
ideas without words, and may combine them for an end: whether it is
done, e. g., with memory-images, as in dreaming. And it is necessary
also to investigate the _essential character of the process of learning
to speak_.

Concerning the first problem, which is of uncommon psychogenetic
interest and practical importance, a solution seems to be promised in
the investigation of the formation of concepts in the case of those born
deaf, the so-called deaf and dumb children. On this point I offer first
the words of a man of practical experience.

The excellent superintendent of the Educational Institute for the Deaf
and Dumb in Weimar, C. Oehlwein (1867), well says:

"The deaf-mute in his first years of life looks at, turns over, feels of
objects that attract him, on all sides, and approaches those that are at
a distance. By this he receives, like the young child who has all his
senses, sensations and sensuous ideas;[C] and from the objects
themselves he apprehends a number of qualities, which he compares with
one another or with the qualities of other objects, but always refers to
the object which at the time attracts him. Herein he has a more correct
or less correct sense-intuition of this object, according as he has
observed, compared, and comprehended more or less attentively. As this
object has affected him through sight and feeling, so he represents it
to other persons also by characteristic signs for sight and indirectly
for feeling also. He shapes or draws a copy of the object seen and felt
with life and movement. For this he avails himself of the means that
Nature has placed directly within human power--the control over the
movement of the facial muscles, over the use of the hands, and, if
necessary, of the feet also. These signs, _not obtained from any one's
suggestion_, self-formed, which the deaf-mute employs directly in his
representation, are, as it were, the given outline of the image which he
has found, and they stand therefore in the closest relation to the inner
constitution of the individual that ma