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"It is certain," he says, "that the fondness of the deaf and dumb for signs, will turn them away from the habitual use of language: and if the master, on every occasion, instead of giving the conventional word to recall such or such an object, make a natural sign to express his thought, he will doubtless be understood, but the French word will not be learned; or, if known, will not be engraven anew upon the memory. It is undoubtedly true, that he may be able to communicate many simple ideas, as promptly by natural signs, as by the most abridged form of writing; or even more so. But, it will be more useful, nevertheless, to say these things, even down to the most simple, in French; because we shall thus form our pupils to the use of that language, which we cannot too constantly inculcate upon them." Again, "since the master cannot cause the words of his mother tongue continually to resound in the ears of his pupil, he must be so much the more careful to write them unceasingly before the eyes; and never to express himself but in this language, save to take advantage of a gesture to help out his meaning. The gesture which paints the object, may thus be a useful auxiliary. But it will never do to reverse the order, to make of the gesture the capital object, and of the French word, which ought always to be remain in the mind, a mere accessory."

Such, likewise, is the language of Degerando. "Let us recall the principle unceasingly: the deaf-mute must enter our ranks; he must become one of us. It is the language of his country which we desire him to acquire. This should become to him what it is to the ordinary child, what it is to its, his mother tongue. But the adoption of the language of his country can never be perfect and sincere, if he continues to see in it only the translation of his own signs: it will not be his mother tongue. It will remain for him, what the learned languages are for us." Again he says, "The deaf-mute must have the resolution often to interdict to himself the language which he has constructed; for the moment to forget it, if he will be truly initiated into that, which is in circulation among his kind. To familiarize him with our language, if is necessary to familiarize him with our mode of conceiving it; from which he is distracted by the language peculiarly his own."

In commenting upon this passage, M. Recoing remarks, that the words "often" and "for the moment," are "a concession too indulgent, made to ancient prejudices."

In illustration of the evils resulting from the existence of too copious a dialect of the language of action, Degerando cites the example of the company of young Egyptians, sent to Paris by the Pacha of their country, to acquire a knowledge of the arts and the learning of Europe. Having been placed together in the same school, they made, for a long time, little progress in the acquisition of French; because like the deaf and dumb, they conversed continually in a language of their own. On this account they were separated, and distributed among different schools; when, immediately, the advantageous effect of denying them the use of their mother tongue, became manifest in the remarkable rapidity of their improvement.

If, then, even that degree of expansion, which in large institutions, seems, in the nature of things, inevitable, is to say the least, not to be desired; what shall we say of the system of instruction, of which the first great dogma is, expansion to the highest possible degree: nay, more than this, expansion beyond even the limit, within which signs are of colloquial use; and expansion, which is not expansion merely, but rather the destruction of all that is natural in the language of action, and the erection of a stupendous artificial structure upon its ruins; artificial in its materials, and artificial in the mode of their combination. We have already said, that the dialect of the institutions is not properly a natural language. This is true; nevertheless it retains one characteristic of that from which it springs, and which is in fact natural, and that is its syntax. This at least continues to be truly natural, after the individual signs have forfeited their claim to that character; and this last trace of nature it is, which the principle of methodical signs comes to destroy. For, in place of a collocation of signs which the deaf-mute comprehends, it proposes to substitute one which he does not comprehend; and thus to present him with a set of unintelligible elements, arranged in all unintelligible order. I say unintelligible elements. Such they are, of course, whenever without the circle of colloquial signs; or, more accurately perhaps, when standing as the representatives of ideas, as yet beyond the limit of the pupil's intellectual range. But may not the corresponding ideas be defined? True, they may: but their, again, of what manner of use is the sign? To what end is it adopted, if not to serve as in auxiliary in defining the idea? The purpose of the school is not to teach signs, but words; and the labour thus spent in defining a sign, is the very labour, and no other, required to teach a word. Now, were it the fact, that each methodical sign brought with it to the pupil its corresponding idea, and thus saved us the labour of developing the same in his mind; then we would, with pleasure, accept the freight and dismiss the vehicle. But the truth is quite otherwise. We are asked to accept the vehicle, and to furnish it with its freight; in order that we may, the next moment, undo our labour. Truly the system of methodical signs is an unwieldy and cumbrous machine, and a dead weight upon the system of instruction in which it is recognized.