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Excerpt from:
Idiocy: And Its Treatment By The Physiological Method
Therefore we must not confound with imbeciles, insanes, epileptics, etc., the harmless idiot, sitting awkwardly, bashful, or at least reserved on our approach. He will answer us if he can, rarely mistaking, never deceiving, but oftentimes failing to understand. His mind is extremely limited but not deranged, and with no special tendency to final insanity. He has been hurt often, but he never assailed anybody; he loves quiet places and arrangements; repeated monotonous sounds, or stillness, and above all plain and familiar faces; he has a look, not of envy at things and persons, but of abstraction, gazing far out of this world into a something which neither we nor he can discern....