A great change has doubtless occurred in the estimation of congenital
deaf-mutes since the Justinian Code, which consigned them forever to
legal infancy, as incapable of intelligence, and classed them with the
insane. Yet most modern writers, for instance Archbishop Whately and
Max Müller, have declared that deaf-mutes could not think until after
having been instructed. It cannot be denied that the deaf-mute thinks
after his instruction either in the ordinary gesture signs or in
the finger alphabet, or more lately in artificial speech. By this
instruction he has become master of a highly-developed language, such
as English or French, which he can read, write, and actually talk,
but that foreign language he has obtained through the medium of signs.
This is a conclusive proof that signs constitute a real language and
one which admits of thought, for no one can learn a foreign language
unless he had some language of his own, whether by descent or
acquisition, by which it could be translated, and such translation
into the new language could not even be commenced unless the mind had
been already in action and intelligently using the original language
for that purpose. In fact the use by deaf-mutes of signs originating
in themselves exhibits a creative action of mind and innate faculty
of expression beyond that of ordinary speakers who acquired language
without conscious effort. The thanks of students, both of philology
and psychology, are due to Prof. SAMUEL PORTER, of the National Deaf
Mute College, for his response to the question, "Is thought possible
without language?" published in the _Princeton Review_ for January,
1880.

With regard to the sounds uttered by deaf-mutes, the same explanation
of heredity may be made as above, regarding the words invented by
young children. Congenital deaf-mutes at first make the same sounds
as hearing children of the same age, and, often being susceptible