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Finally, one may witness in all cases a deficiency in the great exciting and regulating principle of human thought and human action -- the human will. It is this peculiarity that seems to underlie all the other constant symptoms of idiocy. Now it is exhibited in a pupil whose mental faculties seem adequate for any ordinary intellectual operations, and yet they wander vaguely uncontrolled, without collecting food to nourish or invigorate them. Now still more prominently, in a subject with adequate muscular power, with intelligence sufficient to direct that muscular ability, with appetite craving, and yet a want of power of will to extend the hand for food.

In general terms our pupils may be described as affectionate, mild and obedient and easily amused or rendered happy. Still their pleasure and happiness is derived, not from the impressions resulting from sensation generally, but from the continued repetition of a limited number of impressions. And it should be observed as having an important bearing upon the duty we owe them of education, that left to themselves, the range of these sensations rather diminishes with increasing age and feeble sources of pleasure as they may now seem, they will yet pall under the ceaseless repetition.

Regarding, then, these pupils at our asylum as representatives of the whole class of idiots in the State, I will notice, briefly, the immediate objects and ends of any rational efforts for their relief and education.

We do not propose to create or supply faculties absolutely wanting; nor to bring all grades of idiocy to the same standard of development or discipline; nor to make them all capable of sustaining, creditably, all the relations of a social and moral life; but rather to give to dormant faculties the greatest practicable development, and to apply those awakened faculties to a useful purpose under the control of an aroused and disciplined will. At the basis of all our efforts lies the principle that the human attributes of intelligence, sensitivity and will are not absolutely wanting in an idiot, but dormant and undeveloped.

Gross misconceptions I know prevail upon the true nature of idiocy that produce a want of faith in the teachableness of idiots. These arise partly from the crude and trusty observation of a limited number of cases and are confirmed by the common expressions one meets with so frequently whenever the subject is written about or spoken of. Even the witnessed or well authenticated results of efforts for their education are regarded as if they were the performances of trained animals; as if because their animal nature is developed, somewhat at the expense of the spiritual, they were endowed with instinct, instead of reason, by the Creator. But it should be remembered that they have a human origin; that however they may differ in physical, mental or moral organization they are yet human beings; that their degradation in the scale of humanity, however it may modify, constitutes no absolute release or outlawry from the duties or rights which belong to them as human beings, and finally, that they have a human soul, a human destiny. It should be remembered (to borrow the forcible language of another applied to a very different subject,) "that the difference between the dying and the undying -- between the spirit of the brute that goeth downward and the spirit of the man that goeth upward, is not a difference infinitesimally or even atomically small. It possesses all the breadth of the eternity to come, and is an infinitely great difference. It cannot, if I may so express myself, be shaded off by infinitesimals or atoms; for it is a difference which, as there can be no class of beings intermediate in their nature between the dying and undying, admits not of gradation at all." Now while this principle of the existence of the germs of all the immaterial faculties, powers and capabilities, no matter how defective or feeble the material organization, may seem difficult of application in certain cases within the range of our conceptions; yet it should be remembered that this creature of abstractions is not the creature of reality. As you descend in the scale of human degradation the numbers diminish. The greater the exception to the ordinary and natural conditions of humanity, the rarer is the case. As a matter of practice we have to deal mainly with those, where we can, with but a superficial observation detect the rudiments and germs of proper physical, mental and moral endowments. Let me present briefly to your attention some of the special means for awakening the dormant powers and faculties of our own pupils: In the first place where the idiocy is dependent upon a very marked physical imperfection or infirmity, and these of a curable character under the application of proper medical means, as in the case of Cretins in the Alpine Valleys, of course suitable moral training conjoined with proper remedial measures will result in the complete restoration of the idiocy. A multitude of well authenticated cases of complete restoration from the lowest grades of idiocy connected with Cretinism, to a well developed and disciplined intelligence sufficiently attest this opinion. Such cases of extreme physical depravation and at the same time so yielding to proper restorative agencies will constitute the exceptions in idiot asylums in this country. Still the physical causes and symptoms will always be so prominent as to direct the first efforts of the teacher towards the physical training of the idiot. These physical exercises will have the object of establishing the control of the will over the muscular system, cultivating the imitative faculty and fixing the attention of the pupil.