Concerning the first problem, which is of uncommon psychogenetic interest and practical importance, a solution seems to be promised in the investigation of the formation of concepts in the case of those born deaf, the so-called deaf and dumb children. On this point I offer first the words of a man of practical experience.
The excellent superintendent of the Educational Institute for the Deaf and Dumb in Weimar, C. Oehlwein (1867), well says:
"The deaf-mute in his first years of life looks at, turns over, feels of objects that attract him, on all sides, and approaches those that are at a distance. By this he receives, like the young child who has all his senses, sensations and sensuous ideas;[C] and from the objects themselves he apprehends a number of qualities, which he compares with one another or with the qualities of other objects, but always refers to the object which at the time attracts him. Herein he has a more correct or less correct sense-intuition of this object, according as he has observed, compared, and comprehended more or less attentively. As this object has affected him throughsight and feeling, so he represents it to other persons also by characteristic signs for sight and indirectly for feeling also. He shapes or draws a copy of the object seen and felt with life and movement. For this he avails himself of the means that Nature has placed directly within human power—the control over the movement of the facial muscles, over the use of the hands, and, if necessary, of the feet also. These signs, not obtained from any one's suggestion, self-formed, which the deaf-mute employs directly in his representation, are, as it were, the given outline of the image which he has found, and they stand therefore in the closest relation to the inner constitution of the individual that makes the representation.
"But we find not only that the individual senses of the deaf-mute, his own observation and apprehension, are formative factors in the occurrences of sensation and perception, as is of course the case, but that the qualities of the objects observed by him, and associated, according to his individual tendencies, are also raised by him, through comparison, separation, grouping—through his own act, therefore—to general ideas, concepts, although as yet imperfect ones, and they are named and recognized again by peculiar signs intelligible to himself.
"But in this very raising of an idea to a general idea, to a concept—a process connected with the forming of a sign—is manifested the influence of the lack of hearing and of speech upon the psychical development of the deaf-mute. It appears at first to be an advantage that the sign by which the deaf-mute represents an idea is derived from the impression, the image, the idea, which the user of the sign himself has or has had; he expresses by the sign nothing foreign to him, but only what has become his own. But this advantage disappears when compared with the hindrance caused by this very circumstance in the raising of the individual idea to a general idea, for the fact that the latter is designated by the image, or the elements of the image in which the former consists, is no small obstacle to it in attaining complete generality. The same bond that unites the concept with the conceiver binds it likewise to one of the individual ideas conceived—e. g., when, by pointing to his own flesh, his own skin, he designates the concept flesh, skin (in general also the flesh or the skin of animals); whereas, by means of the word, which the child who has all his senses is obliged to learn, a constraint is indeed exercised as something foreign, but a constraint that simply enforces upon his idea the claim of generality.
"One example more. The deaf-mute designates the concept, or general idea, 'red' by lightly touching his lips. With this sign he indicates the red of the sky, of paintings, of dress-stuffs, of flowers, etc. Thus, in however manifold connection with other concepts his concept 'red' may be repeated, it is to him as a concept always one and the same only. It is common to all the connections in which it repeatedly occurs."
But before the thinking deaf-mute arrived at the concept "red," he formed for himself the ideas "lip, dress, sky, flower," etc.
For a knowledge of intellectual development in the child possessed of all the senses, and of the great extent to which he is independent of verbal language in the formation of concepts, it is indispensable to make a collection of such concepts as uneducated deaf-mutes not acquainted either with the finger-alphabet or with articulation express by means of their own gestures in a manner intelligible to others. Their language, however, comprises "not only the various expressive changes of countenance (play of feature), but also the varied movements of the hands (gesticulations), the positions, attitudes, bearing, and movements of the other parts of the entire body, through which the deaf-mute naturally, i. e., untouched by educational influences, expresses his ideas and conceptions." But I refrain from making such a catalogue here, as we are concerned with the fact that many concepts are, without any learning of words whatever, plainly expressed and logically combined with one another, and their correctness is proved by the conduct of any and every untaught child born deaf. Besides, such a catalogue, in order to possess the psychogenetic value desired by me, needs a critical examination extremely difficult to carry through as to whether the "educational influences" supposed to be excluded are actually wholly excluded in all cases as they really are in some cases, e. g., in regard to food.
Degerando (1827) has enumerated a long list of concepts, which deaf-mutes before they are instructed represent by pantomimic gesture. Many of these forms of expression in French deaf-mutes are identical with those of German. It is most earnestly to be wished that this international language of feature and gesture used by children entirely uninstructed, born deaf, may be made accessible to psycho-physiological and linguistic study by means of pictorial representations—photographic best of all. This should be founded on the experiences of German, French, English, Russian, Italian, and other teachers of deaf-mutes.
For there is hardly a better proof that thinking is not dependent on the language of words than the conduct of deaf-mutes, who express, indeed, many more concepts of unlike content in the same manner than any verbal language does—just as children with all their senses do before they possess a satisfactory stock of words—but who, by gesticulation and pantomime before receiving any instruction, demonstrate that concepts are formed without words.