A criticism of the method used by Itard and Séguin for reading and writing seems to me superfluous. The method has two fundamental errors which make it inferior to the methods in use for normal children, namely: writing in printed capitals, and the preparation for writing through a study of rational geometry, which we now expect only from students in the secondary schools.
Séguin here confuses ideas in a most extraordinary way. He has suddenly jumped from the psychological observation of the child and from his relation to his environment, to the study of the origin of lines and their relation to the plane.
He says that the child _will readily design a vertical line_, but that the horizontal will soon become a curve, because "_nature commands it_" and this _command of nature_ is represented by the fact that man sees the horizon as a curved line!
The example of Séguin serves to illustrate the necessity of a _special education_ which shall fit man for _observation_, and shall direct _logical thought_.
The observation must be absolutely objective, in other words, stripped of preconceptions. Séguin has in this case the preconception that geometric design must prepare for writing, and that hinders him from discovering the truly natural proceeding necessary to such preparation. He has, besides, the preconception that the deviation of a line, as well as the inexactness with which the child traces it, are due to "_the mind and the eye, not to the hand_," and so he wearies himself _for weeks and months in explaining_ the direction of lines and in guiding _the vision_ of the idiot.
It seems as if Séguin felt that a good method must start from a superior point, geometry; the intelligence of the child is only considered worthy of attention in its relation to abstract things. And is not this a common defect?
Let us observe mediocre men; they pompously assume erudition and disdain simple things. Let us study the clear thought of those whom we consider men of genius. Newton is seated tranquilly in the open air; an apple falls from the tree, he observes it and asks, "Why?" Phenomena are never insignificant; the fruit which falls and universal gravitation may rest side by side in the mind of a genius.