From these articles the student should go to Blindness (Vol. 4, p. 59), by Sir Francis J. Campbell, principal of the Royal Normal College for the Blind, Norwood, London; an article equivalent in length to 40 pages of this Guide. Its author, the founder of the college, is himself a blind man, who, born in Tennessee, in 1832, and educated at the Nashville school, and afterwards in music at Leipzig and Berlin, had from 1858 to 1869 been associated with Dr. Howe at the Perkins Institution, Boston, and was knighted in 1909 for his services to the education of the blind. The part of his article dealing with the education of the blind is, therefore, doubly valuable and interesting. The main topics with which it deals are: early training—other senses of the blind not naturally sharper than those of the seeing, but developed by cultivation of hearing and touch from early childhood; physical training to increase the average of vitality; mental training; early manual training; choice of occupation; piano-forte tuning; musical training; deaf-mutes should not be educated with the blind as their needs are so different; blind boys and blind girls should not be taught together, as coeducation promotes intermarriage, which is a calamity. The remainder of the article deals with types and books for the blind, appliances for educational work, employment, and biographical matter, with a list of prominent blind people. See also, for literary men who were blind, the articles on John Milton, William H. Prescott, and Philip Bourke Marston.
The Deaf
Deaf and Dumb (Vol. 7, p. 880) is by the Rev. Arnold Hill Payne, chaplain to the Oxford Diocesan Mission to the deaf and dumb, late normal fellow of the National Deaf Mute College, Washington, D. C., and author of many books on the subject. He points out the mistaken use of the word “dumb”—“In the case of the deaf and dumb, as these words are generally understood, dumbness is merely the result of ignorance in the use of the voice, this ignorance being due to deafness.” After discussing causes of deafness, the condition of the deaf in childhood, their natural language, which the contributor thinks is “sign” rather than purely oral, and their social status, he deals with education of the deaf, giving an elaborate historical account including the “oral” revival in Germany and the work in the United States of Dr. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet—see also the separate article on him and his two sons (Vol. 11, p. 416)—and of the National Deaf-Mute College at Washington, D. C. (on which see also the article Washington, D. C.). This interesting article closes with a section on the blind-deaf, telling the story of several remarkable cases in England less well-known and more recent than Laura Bridgman or Helen Keller.
Psychology
This chapter began with a reference to the article on Sociology with the recommendation that it be used as a basis for the study of present-day problems. The reader will often have heard vague allusions to sociology, and his reading this article in the Britannica will certainly sharpen and define his own idea of the meaning and the value of the science. Has he not heard much oftener of psychology, and heard it mentioned as if it were some sort of magic spell to charm away many of the difficulties of our modern complex world? But has he a full comprehension of the meaning of psychology and of the knowledge newly gained in regard to the “psychology of the senses”? The corrective for any vagueness of ideas about psychology is best found in the article Psychology (Vol. 22, p. 547) by Professor James Ward, whose articles for the Britannica have been reprinted and used as text-books in schools and colleges all over the country. Put in a few words, the lesson of psychology is that the senses, sensations, thoughts and feelings, which, even when they are our own, we too often speak of as if they were things apart and independent, are subject to certain natural laws in much the same way as are the forces treated by the science of physics. The reader who would study the subject of psychology in the Britannica should make use of the analysis of many articles in the chapter in this Guide For Teachers.
Crime
As with general education, special education of defectives, state training of feeble-minded, and restraint of the insane, so with the state’s attitude toward the criminal there has been in recent years a great change which is still working toward full fruition, so that prison administration, children’s courts, delinquency, probation, etc., are live topics of interest.
Just as the whole new science of sociology was based by Spencer on biology and on the Darwinian theory of evolution, so in this field of delinquency a “science” has been devised called criminology by its “inventor” Cesare Lombroso. The article Lombroso (Vol. 16, p. 936) in the Britannica criticizes his theories as showing “an exaggerated tendency to refer all mental facts to biological causes.” His theory of a criminal type points to a “practical reform ... a classification of offenders, so that the born criminal may receive a different kind of punishment from the offender who is tempted into crime.” The article Criminology (Vol. 7, p. 464), by Major Arthur Griffiths, Inspector of Prisons, should be read carefully. It lists the supposed criminal traits as follows:
Various brain and cerebral anomalies; receding foreheads; massive jaws, prognathous chins; skulls without symmetry; ears long, large and projecting; noses rectilinear, wrinkles strongly marked, even in the young and in both sexes, hair abundant on the head, scanty on the cheeks and chin; eyes feline, fixed, cold, glassy, ferocious; bad repellent faces.... Other peculiarities are:—great width of the extended arms, extraordinary ape-like agility; left-handedness as well as ambi-dexterism; obtuse sense of smell, taste and sometimes of hearing, although the eyesight is superior to that of normal people.... So much for the anatomical and physiological peculiarities of the criminal. There remain the psychological or mental characteristics, so far as they have been observed. Moral insensibility is attributed to him, a dull conscience that never pricks and a general freedom from remorse. He is said to be generally lacking in intelligence, hence his stupidity, the want of proper precautions, both before and after an offence, which leads so often to his detection and capture. His vanity is strongly marked and shown in the pride taken in infamous achievements rather than personal appearance.
Although Major Griffiths thinks that criminality is oftener due to environment than to congenital defects, he closes his article with this estimate of what has been accomplished by Lombroso and his followers: