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"It is beginning to be seen, also, that man has a double nature and double interests; that he is a social being, as well as an individual; and that he cannot sin with impunity against the one nature any more than he can against the other. God has joined men together, and they cannot put themselves asunder. The ignorance, the depravity, the sufferings of one man, or of one class of men, must affect other men and other classes of men, in spite of all the barriers of pride and selfishness which they may erect around themselves. The doctrine of impenetrability does not obtain in morals, whatever it may do in physics; but on the contrary, as gases afford mutually a vacuum to each other, into which they rush, so the nature of every individual is a vacuum to the nature of society; and its influences, be they for good or be they for evil, penetrate him in spite of himself. It is clear, therefore, that in this as in everything else the interest and the duty of society are common and inseparable.

"Idiocy is a fact in our history of momentous import. It is one of the many proofs of the immense space through which society has yet to advance before it even approaches to the perfection of civilization which is attainable. Idiots form one rank of that fearful host which is ever pressing upon society with its suffering, its miseries, and its crimes, and which society is ever trying to hold off at arms' length, to keep in quarantine, to shut up in jails and almshouses, or, at least, to treat as a pariah caste; but all in vain. ..."

But even these words did not satisfy my father. He wished to speak to a wider audience than the readers of reports; and therefore in this same year of 1848 he wrote a paper on the Causes and Prevention of Idiocy, which was printed anonymously in the third number of the Massachusetts Quarterly Review, and many years after, in 1874, reprinted in pamphlet form over his own signature. In this paper are these memorable words:

"No man ever yet cheated any of the organs of his body of the amount of nervous energy fairly due to them, without being punished for it; because God never forgives a sin; that is, He never lets a man escape without paying the penalty which He ordained should be paid for every violated law when He made the law and created man subject to it.

"The doctrine that God ever forgives a sin, that is, in the ordinary sense of forgiveness, is one that has done incalculable mischief to mankind. Even if God could have any change of purpose, his love for his children would not let him weaken our trust in the certitude of his laws by a single instance of 'variableness or shadow of turning' in the whole history of our race.

"Let moralists convince men, if they can, that no sin of omission or commission was ever forgiven without payment of the uttermost farthing of the penalty, and there will be more hesitation about present gratification and less reliance upon future repentance; and let physiologists teach people that every debauch or excess or neglect is surely followed by evil consequences, and men will be more cautious about present indulgence and less reliant upon future temperance and physic. ..."

The Report made a profound sensation in the community. There were, indeed, some people who laughed, and said to one another, "What do you think Howe is going to do next? he is going to teach idiots! ha! ha!" And they printed a caricature representing my father and Charles Sumner as twin Don Quixotes, riding a tilt against various windmills, and made very merry over this last quixotism of the Chevalier. It seems charitable to suppose that these persons had not read the Report: yet my mother says that one good friend told her that "the Doctor's report was in his opinion a report for idiots as well as concerning them."

But the thoughtful people of Massachusetts were deeply stirred at this revelation of a hitherto unsuspected plague-spot in the community: and the Legislature, shocked but cautious, consented to allow my father to try an experiment, and appropriated $2,500 per annum for three years for the teaching and training of ten idiotic children.

That was all my father asked for the moment. Given the lever, he could always find the pou sto for himself. As in 1830 he had taken the three blind children into his own home, so now, without a moment's hesitation, he took the idiots. His day-time home, the home of his work and his thoughts, was still the Institution for the Blind; and it was in his own wing of the Institution that the new-comers were placed. A competent teacher, Mr. James B. Richards, was found for them; and the experiment began under my father's personal direction.

It succeeded even beyond his hopes. After a year's patient toil he was able to report that:

"The result thus far seems to be most gratifying and encouraging. Of the whole number received, there was not one who was in a situation where any great improvement in his condition was probable, I might almost say possible; they were growing worse in habits, and more confirmed in their idiocy. The process of deterioration in the pupils has been entirely stopped; that of improvement has commenced; and though a year is a very short time in the instruction of such persons, yet its effects are manifest in all of them.