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The signs and sounds that express the feelings, or serve as a medium of communication, in the case of animals are vague and scanty. Not so the first language of childhood. How great is the child's power of expressing its wants and wishes before speech is attained! Its physique becomes transparent to a careful observer, enabling him to follow the very process of thought. Doubt and questioning will cloud a little face, while an idea comprehended or a thought begotten will light it up. Then there is a whole armory of expression, by signs innumerable, before articulation is attained or attempted. It furnishes weapons of inquiry as to what and how and when and where; of distinction of time and place, of personality and circumstance.

And a point to which attention should be called is this: each one of these is worked out experimentally, its use learned, and then repeated till it becomes spontaneous and automatic.

The time comes, with advancing months, when experiments, prompted by the imitative faculty, and based upon a dawning appreciation of distinctions of vocal sounds and their use as a means of communication, are begun. The inarticulate sounds emanating from the larynx are interrupted in their progress outward by motions of the lips and tongue. The necessary movements of these upper and outer vocal organs are at last individualized and brought under the control of the will, and then the sounds made are elementary and syllabic. During this gradual process of acquisition of what may be termed a second language, the grasp of the first, or that of signs, is not surrendered. The two are used conjointly in varying proportions till the second is fully mastered.

No matter, for our present purpose, whether we regard these as prime endowments of the race or accidentally generated, and then fixed and transmitted by some subtle law of heredity. And it may be added, what every parent of a family of children has had an opportunity to observe, that there is no positive correspondence between the stages of infantile comprehension of language and its use, and the disposition to use it, and the access and development of articulate speech.

Or to give it another expression, the faculty and the function in development do not keep the same relative pace in different individuals, seemingly of similar degrees of intelligence. Something will depend upon the relative condition of nerve-elements, with which in action both faculty and function are associated; more, perhaps, upon the influence of surroundings that may aid or hinder the development of each. The seat of nerve-action and the development of nerve-action are different in each case, as also the source and manner of the influence operating upon each. And, again, there is a difference in the period when the idea of language is grasped in the clearness of the grasp, and in the force and variety of the motives that prompt to use it.

These are facts, it seems to me, of common observation, under the usual circumstances of infantile development, in the matter of speech.

We may now consider some of the forms of absent or defective speech, seen in our own special field of observation. Incidentally the inquiry may throw some light upon the normal course of lingual development, for under such circumstances the whole process in its every stage is slow and difficult, and there is therefore the better opportunity to observe the start, watch the steps, and comprehend the difficulties.

Take a child of seven or eight years old, or even older, standing, mentally, where an ordinary infant of three months old does. One, it may be, that has scarcely begun to notice distinctions of sound, directions of sound, or sound at all; not through any defect in the organ of hearing, but from not using the organ -- deafness in the perceptive ear; that makes only inarticulate and emotional sounds. To such an one, speech, in idea or exercise, is far away.

But watch the progress of such an one in the acquisition of the faculty, -- as all of us have done. If the steps are carefully followed, there may be seen the relation of intuition and intelligence to language; of activity of sensation (and co-ordinating power over motor nerves) to speech; the correspondence between awakened intelligence and mental activity and the comprehension of language in different degrees; the mode in which communication is established from without through sight and hearing, in which perception is built up upon sensation; the steps by which a co-ordinating power over the vocal apparatus is attained; and, finally, an illustration of the method of the whole system of training for idiots.

In the typical case suggested, we may suppose that what are usually spoken of as the organs of speech are perfect, however torpid in action. That the physiological default is in the nervous centres and in the nerves of relation. Modes of communication are not noticed. There is no desire to communicate with others. The individual is completely isolated; less the faint consciousness that his wants are supplied, he does not know how or why. There is a want of perceptive discrimination of the signs and sounds by which communication is obtained. There is little or no manifestation of the imitative faculty by which the normal child is prompted to reproduce certain signs and sounds made in his presence, and by which he is enabled to reproduce them. There is sometimes an apparent unconsciousness on the part of the idiot that he has vocal organs. Beyond instinctive cries, he is positively still.