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We shall see, however, that the views of Sicard underwent a remarkable change. In the advertisement to his Theorie des Signes (9) he says, 'It will be observed that I have somewhat exaggerated the sad condition of the deaf and dumb in their primitive state, when I assert that virtue and vice are to them without reality. I was conducted to these assertions, by the fact, that I had not yet possessed the means of interrogating them upon the ideas which they had before their education; or that they were not sufficiently instructed to understand, and reply to my questions. I have always taught that the law of nature is engraved, by the creating hand, upon the soul of man; that this law is anterior to all sensible impressions, which our organs receive; that it is nothing else than the light divine, which teaches man his duties; which awards him the meeds of approbation and happiness when he is faithful, and punishes him when he transgresses its dictates.'

Regarding, therefore, the deaf and dumb as beings possessed of an intelligence not wholly inactive; beings, not entirely shut out from communication with their fellows: not entirely without interest in that which is passing before them: not wholly unaccustomed to reason and to reflect; and not absolutely without ideas, appertaining to the intellectual and moral worlds: it becomes important to examine, how great a degree of development their mental powers are capable of attaining, and how far the circle of their ideas naturally extends. This inquiry has relation, of course, only to those dumb persons who have been deaf from birth. In every case in which deafness has supervened at a later period, the faculties of the mind may have received considerable cultivation before that event. Even language may have been preserved, as in the case of Desloges, after the power of utterance is gone. Cases of this kind are, evidently, widely different from that of an individual, who, never having heard a sound, has of course never attempted to articulate, and for whom language, whether written or spoken, has ever been a sealed book.

It is not to be supposed, that the intellectual faculties of the deaf and dumb will as frequently be called into exercise as those of other persons; it is not, indeed, possible that they should be. The development of those faculties will, therefore, be much less rapid; on account, at once, of this want of exercise, and of the greater labor requisite to conduct mental operations by the direct intuition of ideas, than by means of the signs which artificial languages afford to represent them. It is a consequence, also, of their calamity, that they are cut off from all that species of traditional knowledge, which naturally flows from generation to generation; which is imparted almost unconsciously, and treasured in the memory almost without effort. The experience of the human race in each succeeding age is constantly adding something to the floating wealth of mind; but of all this the unfortunate deaf and dumb know, and can know nothing, -- nothing, at least, in comparison with the world which is to be known. In fact, it is, in their case, strictly true, as is remarked by M. Bebian, that 'the world, so to speak, commences with them. Still the very calamity which shuts them out even from the pale of that knowledge which is open to infancy, and familiar to the child of half a dozen years, is not without its favorable influence upon the originality of their conceptions, and the activity of their intellect. Their attainments, however humble, are at least the fruit of their own labor; and their opinions, however, at times, erroneous, are still the result of their own independent reasoning upon such data as are within their reach. Their ingenuity is continually awake, to supply the deficiency of their information, and to break down, or at least to weaken, the barrier between themselves and the speaking world.'

A strong inducement with the deaf and dumb to become close observers, is found in the nature of their language. This beautiful language is their own creation, and is a visible testimony to the activity of their intellect. It is a language of action, full of force, full of animation, full of figurative expression, oftentimes full of grace. In the province of pantomime they are themselves the masters, and those who hold intercourse with them, must be content to receive the instrument at their hands. The elements of this language, the words, so to speak, which compose it, consisting, within the domain of sense, strictly of imitations, whether of objects or of actions, and beyond that limit, first of those universally intelligible signs, by which the mind involuntarily betrays its emotions, and secondly of metaphoric expressions, founded upon the analogies which exist between objects and actions in the physical world and intellectual and moral notions, require an accurate eye, and a constant exercise of ingenuity on the part of its inventor.