PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. To teach deaf and dumb persons to speak, is an enterprise which does not require great talents, but much patience. After reading with attention what I am about to offer upon this matter, every father or mother, master or mistress, may hope to succeed in the attempt, provided they be not discouraged by the difficulties they will infallibly experience on the part of their pupil at first; difficulties they must expect; but, above all things, let them avoid betraying the least symptom of impatience, for it would instantly disconcert him, while yet a novice in this art, and make him abandon a course of instruction, whose value he cannot estimate, and whose first lessons present nothing agreeable. In my 'Methodical Institution,' printed in 1776, I disclaimed all pretensions to be considered as the inventor of this branch of instruction, acknowledging, that when I formerly took upon me the education of two deaf and dumb twin sisters, it did not enter my mind to take any steps towards teaching them to speak. Nevertheless I had not forgotten, that in a conversation, when I was about the age of sixteen, with my tutor of philosophy, who was an excellent metaphysician, he had proved to me, upon incontestible principles, that there is no more natural connection between metaphysical ideas and the articulate sounds which strike the ear, than between these same ideas and the written characters which strike the eye. I perfectly recollected that, as a consummate philosopher, he drew this direct conclusion from his premises, namely, that it would be as possible to instruct the deaf and dumb by written characters, always accompanied by sensible signs, as to instruct other men by words delivered orally, along with gestures indicative of their signification. At that moment I little thought Providence was laying the foundation of the vocation to which I was destined. Moreover I conceived myself, that it was only by mere arbitrary agreement amongst people of the same country, that the words and writing of any nation signified something; and that it must every where have been signs which had given to words as well as to writing, and to writing as well as to words, the virtue of recalling to the mind the ideas of things which had been shown, by some sign of the eye or of the hand as their names were first pronounced or written, written or pronounced. Full of these ideas, deduced from the clearest metaphysical truths, I began the education of my two pupils. I soon saw that the deaf and dumb person, under the guidance of a good master, is an attentive |