But there is yet a third disadvantage for the already handicapped deaf boy. He has no other language to build upon, while the other has his mother tongue with which to compare the foreign language he is learning. The latter already has a general idea of sentences and clauses, of tense and mood, of gender, number and case, of substantives, verbs and prepositions; and he knows that one language must form some sort of parallel to another. He is already prepared to find a subject, predicate and object, in the sentence of a foreign language, even when he knows not a word of any but his own mother tongue. If he is told that a certain word in German is an adjective, he understands what its function is, even when he has yet to learn the meaning of the word. All this goes for nothing in the case of the deaf pupil. The very elementary fact that certain words denote certain objects--that there is such a class of word as substantives--comes as a revelation to most deaf children. They have to begin at seven laboriously and artificially to learn what an ordinary baby has unconsciously and naturally discovered at the age of two. English, spoken, written, printed or finger-spelled, is no more natural, comprehensible or easy of acquirement to the deaf than is Chinese. The manual alphabet is simply one way of expressing the vernacular on the fingers; it is no more the deaf-mute's "natural" language than speech or writing, and if he cannot express himself by the latter modes of communicating, he cannot by spelling on the fingers. The last is simply a case of _vicaria linguae manus_. None of these are languages in themselves; whether you use pen or type, hand or voice, you are but adopting one or other method of expressing one and the same tongue--English or whatever it may be, that of a "people of a strange speech and of a hard language, whose words they cannot understand." The deaf child's natural mode of communication--more natural to him than any verbal language is to hearing people--is the world-wide, natural language of signs.
2. _Natural Language of the Deaf._--We have just called signs a natural language. While a purist might properly object to this adjective being applied to all signs, yet it is not an unfair term to use as regards this method of conversing as a whole, even in the United States, where signs, being to a great extent the French signs invented by de l'Epée, are more artificial than in England. The old story, by the way, of the pupil of de l'Epée failing to write more than "hand, breast," as describing what an incredulous investigator did when he laid his hand on his breast, proves nothing. In all probability he had no idea that he was expected to describe an action, and thought that he was being asked the names of certain parts of the body. The hand was held out to him and he wrote "hand." Then the breast was indicated by placing the hand on it, and he wrote "breast." Moreover, the artificial element is much less pronounced than is supposed by most of those who are loudest in their condemnation of signs, there being almost invariably an obvious connexion between the sign and idea. These critics are generally people whose acquaintance with the subject is rather limited, and the thermometer of whose zeal in waging war against gestures generally falls in proportion as the photometer of their knowledge about them shows an increasing light. We may go still further and point out that to object to any sign on the ground of artificiality _per se_, is to strain at the gnat and to swallow the camel, for English itself is one of the most artificial languages in existence, and certainly is more open to such an objection than signs. If we apply the same test to English that is applied to signs by those who would rule out any which they suppose cannot come under the head of natural gesture or pantomime, what fraction of our so-called natural language should we have left? For a spoken word to be "natural" in this sense it must be onomatopoetic, and what infinitesimal percentage of English words are such? A foreigner, unacquainted with the language, could not glean the drift of a conversation in English, except perhaps a trifle from the tone of the voices and more from the natural signs used--the smiles and frowns, the expressions of the faces, the play of eyes, lips, hands and whole body. The only words he could possibly understand without such aids are some such onomatopoetic words as the cries of animals--"mew," "chirrup," &c., and a few more like "bang" or "swish."