DEAF AND DUMB 733 head of the first public school ever established open to all classes and supported by the gov- ernment. The ignorance of the friends of his first pupils made writing unavailable as a means of communication, and Amman's book falling into his hands, he eagerly adopted its princi- ples. Holding that thought is impossible save through the medium of spoken words, he de- clared that all means of instruction besides ar- ticulation were utterly insufficient for mental culture; and he carried on a controversy with De I'Epee, the originator of the French system. His native talents and force of character insured him eminent success, though his mode of opera- tion was not materially different from that em- ployed by his predecessors. One of his sons- in-law, Reich, succeeded him at Leipsic; an- other, Eschke, established the school at Berlin, and his own son one at Crefeld. The great ma- jority of teachers in Germany being trained in his system, it long reigned almost supreme in that country. France was the last of the lead- ing European nations to engage in this work. As late as the commencement of the 17th century a Pere Dumoulin denied its possibility. But in 1679 a decree of the parliament of Toulouse declared valid the will of one Guibal, a con- genital deaf mute, written by his own hand. No traces of his instructor have been found ; and of several persons alleged to have taught the deaf, little has come down besides names and places. The first to attract public atten- tion was Jacob Rodriguez Pereira, a Portuguese Jew, grandfather of the eminent financiers. He began teaching in 1743, and gave exhibitions be- fore the academy of sciences in Paris in June, 1749, and January, 1751 ; but even the flattering reports made by committees of the academy failed to obtain from the government the liberal payment he demanded for making public his method, which he kept a profound secret, ex- . eluding even his family from all knowledge of it. Not till long after his death was it divulged by his pupil Saboreux de Fontenai. The first 12 or 15 months were devoted to acquiring a correct pronunciation, the meaning of only a few simple expressions being given; this once attained, he proceeded to impart a general command of language. He made great use of a syllabic dactylology based on 30 fundamental positions of the fingers, designed to indicate the position of the vocal organs in uttering the sounds. This formed a very rapid means of communication. The sense of words was im- pressed by frequent repetition in different con- nections, signs being used only at the very first. Ernaud (1762) appears to have been a mere imitator of Pereira, and less successful. The Abbe Deschamps of Orleans, who in 1779 pub- lished a Cours coeducation, devoted his whole life and fortune to the deaf and dumb, receiv- ing indigent pupils gratuitously. His preference for articulation defeated all efforts to induce him to unite with De 1'Epee. Thus far articu- lation had been with all the chief object of instruction, and with some the chief means. Very little use had been made of the gestures by which the uneducated deaf naturally ex- press their desires and feelings. Diderot's Let- tre 8ur les sourds et muets (1751), indeed, eulogized pantomime as a means of commu- nication ; but to test its capabilities fully and practically was reserved for the abbe de 1'Epee. In 1755, while living in Paris a life of literary leisure, this benevolent ecclesiastic chanced upon two deaf young women. Their education had been begun by Pere Vanin, who had been the instructor of Pereira's favor- ite pupil De Fontenai; but his death left it barely commenced. Their deplorable condi- tion strongly excited the compassion of De 1'fipee, and he undertook to become their pre- ceptor. Discovering others of the class, he de- voted himself to the work, confining his atten- tion to the poor. Like Deschamps, he gave his whole fortune to his pupils. He welcomed public notice and the visits of distinguished personages, for the sake of winning friends for the deaf; and unlike most previous teachers, who had made a mystery and a monopoly of their art, he desired nothing more earnestly than to train up suitable persons to extend and continue the work. Joseph II. of Austria of- fered him the revenues of an estate ; he be- sought instead that he would establish a school for the deaf. De I'ftpee at first followed Vanin in teaching by means of pictures, but soon found that they produced extremely incorrect impressions. He next tried articulation, but was disheartened by the slow and unsatisfac- tory progress made. Suddenly bethinking himself that the connection between ideas and spoken words was purely arbitrary, he sur- mised that an association could be equally well established between ideas and written words. He observed also that the deaf possessed al- ready a means of communication in gestures, and considered that to teach them one of our conventional languages would be merely a pro- cess of translation from this natural language, when it had been philosophically improved and expanded into an exact correspondence with the other. Upon these principles he proceed- ed, and successfully. De l'pee died in 1789, and was' succeeded by the abbe Sicard, then at the head of the school at Bordeaux. Sicard was a man of less philanthropic and disinter- ested character than his master, but of keener and more philosophical intellect, and better fit- ted to push the claims of his establishment for adoption by the government, -which it received in 1791. During the revolution his priestly character placed him in great peril ; and during Napoleon's hundred days his Bourbon sympa- thies made it expedient for him to repair to England, where the performances of his favor- ite pupils and assistants, Massieu and Clerc, excited the greatest astonishment. Sicard, while preserving in the main the system of De 1'fipee, improved it in many important respects. By an analytical system of visible illustration he made the principles of grammar
