at his relatives make movements of the mouth in their
intercourse, and repeated attempts of those about him to make themselves
intelligible by pronouncing certain words to him are not entirely
without effect upon the deaf-mute that is intellectually active. When
such deaf-mutes now direct their attention to the matter, they succeed
in regard to only a part of the sounds--those that are conspicuous to
the eye in their utterance--in getting a tolerable imitation. Individual
deaf-mutes go so far, in fact, as to understand various words correctly
without repeating them; others succeed gradually in repeating such words
as 'papa, mamma,' so that one can understand what is meant. Those who
are deaf-mutes from birth do not, however, of themselves, succeed in
imitating accurately other vocal sounds in general."

A deaf-mute, who had not been instructed, explained to Romanes, at a
later period when he had learned the sign-language, that he had before
thought in "images," which means nothing else than that he, in place of
the words heard (in our case) and the digital signs seen (in his case),
had made use of memory-images gained from visual impressions, for
distinguishing his concepts. Laura Bridgman, too, a person in general
the subject of very incorrect inferences, who was not blind and deaf
from birth, could form a small number of concepts that were above the
lowest grade. These originated from the materials furnished by the sense
of touch, the muscular sense and general sensibility, before she had
learned a sort of finger-language. But she had learned to speak somewhat
before she became dumb and blind. Children with sight, born deaf, seem
not to be able to perform the simplest arithmetical operations, e. g.,
214-96 and 908 X 70 (according to Asch, 1865), until after several years
of continuous instruction in articulate speaking. They do succeed,
however, and that without sound-images of words, and perhaps, too,
without sight-images of words; in mental arithmetic without knowledge of
written figures, by help of the touch-images of words which the tongue
furnishes.

In any case uneducated persons born deaf can count by means of the
fingers without the knowledge of figures; and, when they go beyond 10,
the notched stick comes to their aid (Sicard and Degerando).

The language of gesture and feature in very young children, born dumb
and not treated differently from other children, shows also, in most
abundant measure, that conce