and people and tongue and nation present, was not this efficacious speech, imparted by immediate inspiration! "There is in us," he says, "no faculty which more strikingly bears the character of life than speech; nay, in the human voice may be said to dwell the very essence of life. In a word, the voice is a living emanation of that immortal spirit, which God breathed into the nostrils of man, when he created him a living soul. Among the immense number of gifts from God to man, it is speech, in which eminently shines the imprint of Divinity. In like manner as the Almighty created all things by his word, so he gave to man, not only, in an appropriate language, to celebrate worthily his author, but further, to produce by speech whatever he desires, in conformity with the laws of his existence. This divine mode of speaking almost disappeared from the earth, along with so many other perfections, at that unhappy epoch, the fall. Hardly, in the long course of ages since elapsed, has the precious prerogative been accorded to a few privileged individuals. These were no other than souls, sanctified and united to God by fervent and continual prayer, who, interrogating the very essence of things, have been endowed with the gift of miracles. These holy personages have exhibited to the view of other men, traces of an empire, once common to all, but which most have suffered to escape!!(1)”

It is not to be wondered at, that such views, upon a man of Heinicke's temperament, and under his circumstances, should have made a deep and abiding impression. As he read and pondered upon human language, and its wonderful power of embodying and conveying to others, the operations of the soul, he thought of it, as his master had done before him, chiefly, if not only, in its spoken form. It was the voice, which showed forth the glory of God's gift to man. It

(1) Surdus Loquens: sive Dissertatio de Loquela, 1740.

was speech only, which fully comprehended, contained and expressed, the movements of the soul. Every other means of communication was dead. That alone spoke into life and power, and stood by itself in its capacity of awaking the same life in the soul of others.

Setting out with these leading ideas, his views of written language may easily be ascertained. "The written word,” | says he, "is only the representative of articulate sound. It addresses itself to the eye, and can never be imprinted on the soul, or become the medium of thought. That is the sole prerogative of the voice. Without an acquaintance with spoken language, a deaf-mute child can never become any thing more than a writing machine, or have any thing beyond a succession of images passing through his mind." (Heinicke's language in substance.)

At this very time, there was an instructor of the deaf and dumb, in France, whose success, notwithstanding the serious errors with which his system was disfigured, afforded the most striking refutation of the fundamental principle of Heinicke, that thinking can only be carried on through the medium of articulate words, conceived of by the mind. This was Charles Michel de l'Epée, born at Versailles, on the 25th of November, 1712.

Assuming that our ideas, in their own nature, have no closer connection with vocal sounds, than with written words, that the signs or gestures natural to the deaf and dumb may be made to answer the same purpose, which our mother tongue serves in the learning of a foreign language, he aimed to make his pupils acquainted with books through a process of specific translations of signs into written language, and that again into signs. So unartificial, however, is the structure of the natural sign language of the deaf and dumb, so destitute of the inflections of grammar, and so much does it confine itself to individual and concrete forms of expression,

that he found himself obliged to construct for it, in fact, a grammar and vocabulary, that is, in other words, to invent a sign, or succession of signs, for all those numerous words and modifications of words, together with the grammatical terminations and connectives, which exist only in our highly artificial languages, and then to bring the whole into a grammatical order, corresponding with that of the French language. His error, in which he was followed by Sicard, consisted in the attempt to give to the sign language of the deaf and dumb, a development of which it is not susceptible. Still it is not to be denied, that he was eminently successful, even if we had no other evidence than the testimony of the learned and profound philosopher, Condillac. (Grammaire ; cap. 1. du Language d' Action.)

It cannot be sufficiently regretted, that these two men, who should have been friends, will ever stand before the world as rivals and enemies. Both were probably to blame. Both were too desirous of claiming for themselves the honor of discoveries and attempts, which belonged exclusively to neither. Heinicke, however, commenced the attack. In a small work, on the mode of thinking of the deaf and dumb, issued in 1780, in which he makes mention of his own method of instruction, he presumptuously and most rashly ventured the assertion, that all other methods, that of the Abbé de l'Épée not excepted, were useless and pernicious, and no less than delusive folly, fraud and nonsense. De l'Epée was not the man to sustain such an assault unmoved. He entered the arena, and several letters, couched in terms which sufficiently attested the severity of the one and the keenness of the other, passed between them.

A few words are sufficient to sum up the substance of the whole. Heinicke maintains, that the deaf and dumb, instead of being instructed in language through the medium of signs and writing, should be taught to speak and read aloud by

imitating the motion of the lips; on the ground, that it is difficult, if not impossible, for the mind, by the sense of sight alone, to grasp the endless succession of letters which form the words of spoken language, and that abstract ideas cannot be communicated to the deaf and dumb, either by writing or pantomimic signs.

The answer of De lE'pée was, that he himself had instructed the deaf and dumb in speaking, but that according to his experience, the acquisition was of no great value; that the whole time spent in the mechanical learning of speech, by the deaf mute, was so much deducted from the opportunities of mental cultivation; that if it was impossible for the deaf and dumb to remember, by the sense of sight, the order in which the letters of words are placed in writing, the same difficulty pertains to speaking aloud, inasmuch as the deaf mute must recollect the different positions of the mouth, which are demanded by different sounds; that in point of fact, deaf mutes learn the letters of the alphabet in a very short time; that the manual alphabet, in which the written letters are represented by different positions of the fingers, supplied the place of articulation; and that, because the manual alphabet, alike with the sound of the letters, is not capable of conveying the signification of words, resort must be had to methodical signs, or the artificial system of signs to which we have already alluded.

Which of the combatants gained the victory, in a contest in which both were more or less in the wrong, it is of no importance to decide. Indeed, the controversy might well be allowed to be forgotten, were it not for the doubly unfortunate result which has followed it. Not only did it early produce a division into opposing schools, of teachers aiming at the same common object, but it has had the effect in Germany of making a wrong issue upon the question in debate. Since De l'Epée's time, great changes have been made in that

system of instruction, which relies principally upon pantomimic signs and writing to impart to the deaf mute a knowledge of the meaning and power of language. Sicard varied from De l'Epée. The American schools, and even the school at Paris, have varied much from Sicard. The manual alphabet nearly every where now occupies, as an instrument of instruction, a very subordinate position. More and more, in the progress of improvement, the great dependence is placed upon written language, explained, in the elementary stages of instruction, by means of the natural sign language of the deaf and dumb, and at a later period by means of language already learned. Hence the question in our day in respect to the articulation system and its effects is entirely changed.

Unfortunately, the German teachers, with here and there an honorable exception, seem to be unaware of the fact. With laughable earnestness they still make grave assaults upon the manual alphabet, as if De l'Epée were still in the field, and the question lay between that and articulation. No writer fails to send an arrow against methodical signs, as if that artificial system must of course be employed in the absence of instruction in articulation. And the consequence is, that it is impossible from the German works, to gather an adequate view of the mooted question in respect to the great rival systems, as it now stands.

From the school of Heinicke at Leipzig, have proceeded, directly, or indirectly, nearly all the schools for the deaf and dumb in Germany, with the exception of those in Austria, and a few in Bavaria.

The son of Heinicke, lately deceased, became the principal of a school at Crefeld; one of his daughters was married to Mr. Eschke, principal of the school in Berlin, and another to Mr. Reich, the present accomplished director of the original institution at Leipzig; and the natural conse