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A language, the work of a single individual, and that one laboring under the painful privation to which the deaf and dumb are subject, must necessarily suffer in comparison with those, which, in the lapse of ages, have been approaching perfection, and on which a multitude of minds have left the traces of their labors. Still, imperfect as it is, it has its advantages; it employs no expletives merely to fill a place; its signs are not rendered uncertain by being made to represent a multiplicity of ideas; it is unencumbered by the forms of artificial grammar, with their exceptions and anomalies; and, above all, resting upon analogy and description as its basis, it interprets itself. If, therefore, it is less the language of philosophy, it is more that of nature. Its copiousness is found to vary with different individuals, and with different ages. Those deaf and dumb persons, on whom particular attention is bestowed by their parents and friends, who have been, in short, willing learners, will prove themselves ready inventors, and delighted teachers. Those, on the contrary, who are neglected and thrust out of society, will hardly extend their dictionary of signs beyond the limit to which their physical wants compel them. Still it would be unjust to conclude that this is likewise the limit of their ideas. Signs are primarily instituted, whatever uses they may afterwards subserve, as instruments of communication. He, with whom none will hold intercourse, will hardly busy himself in perfecting a language, which he will never have occasion to use. This is not, however, to suppose him without ideas, wherever signs are wanting. It is only to suppose, that the mind employs itself with ideas, directly, rather than with their representatives. In like manner as a draughtsman, in copying a design, fixes in his mind the image of a particular line, which he is about to transfer into his work, without being conscious of giving it a name; so the deaf and dumb conceive ideas, for which they have no visible representative.

To persons not familiar with the language of action, it will hardly be found comprehensible, in its present state. However accurate originally may be its imitations, however striking its analogies, it invariably undergoes, in the hands of the dumb, a species of abbreviation, which leaves it little title to the character which has been claimed for it, of constituting a natural and universal language. Thought continually outstrips the slowness of pantomime; and the mind, impatient of delay, rejects the details of description, and seizing the characteristic, which, in each object, stands most prominently forth, substitutes it, at once, for the object itself. The same is true of ideas purely intellectual. The metaphor which supplies them with a visible representative, is reduced to a single sign; which, to be intelligible, must presuppose a knowledge of the subordinate portion of the picture, and which is, consequently, always more or less arbitrary. By the institution of these abbreviated signs, usually denominated signs of reduction, the language of action becomes singularly elliptical, as well as figurative. The ellipses will readily be supplied by one in frequent intercourse with the deaf and dumb, even when they occur in cases entirely new. But to a stranger, it will be necessary to exhibit the language as it is in its infancy, before the process of reduction has commenced; and to sacrifice rapidity for the sake of clearness. This necessity will be instantly perceived by the dumb, and cheerfully complied with. And if one form of expression is found to fail, another and another will be supplied, with an almost exhaustless fertility of invention. Here will be apparent the fruit of that minute observation, which omits to treasure up no circumstance, likely afterwards to be of use in recounting past events, in describing absent objects, or in assisting those inquiries, by which the observer desires to obtain information from others.

As, on the one hand, the dialects invented by deaf and dumb persons, living separately, are seldom extensively similar; so, on the other, they are rarely, if ever, without some resemblance. But that which they have in common is but a small portion of the whole. Degerando remarks, that the signs which usually differ are those denoting the very numerous class of material objects; while those which indicate the affections of the soul, the few intellectual ideas in possession of the individuals, the common wants and ordinary usages of life, and objects of immediate personal use, are often identical.

It cannot be doubted, that, under ordinary circumstances, the uninstructed deaf and dumb possess a certain power of discrimination on moral subjects. They are certainly capable of distinguishing between good and evil, justice and injustice, for they spontaneously express their indignation against the perpetrator of any enormity, though by no means affecting them directly or indirectly. They are conscious of possessing certain rights, and they cannot but infer the existence of such rights in others. Thus, they have a notion of the right of property, which is not the less real, that it does not always prevent them from invading that right. What is there wonderful in this? How many, with the light of revelation to guide them, and with the denunciations of the civil and the divine laws equally hanging over their heads, are guilty of similar violence to their consciences! But it would little avail the culprit to plead his crime in extenuation of his criminality. We moreover believe that the deaf and dumb have, in this respect, been severely judged. When M. Paulmier, a gentleman associated with Sicard, asserts that newly arrived pupils usually plunder each other, he says that, which our own observation, at least, will not bear him out in asserting.