Note 77 — Chapter VII

For meaningless articulation by idiots, see Scott’s Remarks on Education of Idiots. The fact is alluded to by most writers on idiot psychology, and I have frequently observed it myself. But the case of uneducated deaf-mutes is here more to the purpose. I will, therefore, furnish one quotation in evidence of the above statement. “It is a very notable fact bearing upon the problem of the Origin of Language, that even born-mutes, who never heard a word spoken, do of their own accord and without any teaching make vocal sounds more or less articulate, to which they attach a definite meaning, and which, when once made, they go on using afterwards in the same unvarying sense. Though these sounds are often capable of being written down more or less accurately with our ordinary alphabets, this effect on those who make them can, of course, have nothing to do with the sense of hearing, but must consist only in particular ways of breathing, combined with particular positions of the vocal organs” (Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 72, where see for evidence). The instinctive articulations of Laura Bridgman (who was blind as well as deaf) are in this connection even still more conclusive (see ibid., pp. 74, 75).