ADDRESS 
BEFORE THE 
Auricular Section of the 
Fourteenth Convention 
OF 
AMERICAN INSTRUCTORS 
OF THE DEAF. 
BY 
PROF. J. C. GORDON, M. A., PH. D. Mr. Chairman:—It gives me great pleasure to respond to 
3’our invitation to speak before the Auricular Section of this 
Convention, not simply to congratulate Miss McCheane, and 
all of her assistants in this new and special field, upon so 
satisfactory a demonstration of auricular training and its 
results in these bright and intelligent, little, deaf-born chil- 
dren who entered your school oily one or two years ago; nor, 
to congratulate you upon the realization of a theory which you 
have had the courage to put to the test of thorough-going 
experiment; but to emphasize the fact that in this demonstra- 
tion there is a lesson for all educators, and especially for those 
who would advance the education of the deaf and dumb. 
The lesson is this: That education should begin and pro- 
ceed along psycho-physiological lines upon demonstrable laws 
of brain-building and correlated mind-building. I need hardly 
say that the dominant systems and practice have not been 
constructed upon this basis of biological science, nor need I 
stop to deplore the results, everywhere apparent, of mis- 
directed energies. 
Even Pestalozzi, Froebee and the so-called Herbartians, 
the forerunners of progress, have been more successful in 
exploding old theories than in working out a perfect system 
themselves. But the new education for which they labored is 
coming to the front, an education which will give a progress- 
ive training to all the senses, giving the pupil full command 
of whatever capital he has, and, by the harmonious develop- 
ment of his powers, placing him in intelligent control of all 
his forces and of all his mental acquisitions, so that the pupil 
thus trained will and must think to some purpose, as well as 
merely know. This outcome of proper sense-training, ever 
keeping in view mental assimilation, and the right correlation 
of facts, rather than the mere receptivity of them, is the 
pupil’s greatest need, and to meet this need is the aim of the 
new education. 4 
We are concerned just now only with the first steps after 
the child leaves the mother’s knee: the sub-primary, and 
primary stages of mind-building, through brain-building, by 
the appropriate stimulation of the nervous organization 
through the constant and progressive training of all the senses. 
The zealous teacher needs, perhaps, to be warned against the 
temptation to over-train one sense, usually the sense which 
least needs it, to the neglect of others. 
The more rudimentary or fragmentary the sense may be, the 
more important, of course, is the development of that particular 
sense; for no sense can perform a function foreign to its nature, 
or act as substitute for another in its peculiar field. 
The senses should be exercised systematically for many 
months, if not years, and this training should include at least 
five phases: (1) in taking clear mental images; (2) in re- 
producing these images; (3) in rendering each sense more 
accurate; (4) in extending its range; (5) in establishing clearly 
defined correlations between the senses. I have sought in 
vain for any practical hand-book amplifying these suggestions 
for the use of educators, or illustrating them by appropriate 
and sufficient exercises. 
You may recall the pioneer work in this line by the late Dr. 
E. Seguin. Full of scientific ardor, he subjected one feeble- 
minded child to a series of experiments in the use of the eyes 
alone, and another, to a like series in the use of the hands 
alone, finally bringing both children to a remarkable degree 
of mental development. He thus laid the foundation for the 
system of educating feeble-minded children now practiced 
throughout the world. In this work Dr. Seguin anticipated 
recent anatomical and physiological discoveries of cerebral 
structure and growth as related to mental functions. And all 
who deal with backward children, deaf or otherwise, may find 
it advantageous to study the system developed from Dr. 
Seguin’s experiments. 
We may, and do fall short in the development and wise 
application of sound pedagogic theories to practice in the 
education of deaf and dumb children, but whatever our failures 
in this respect may be, Auricular and Oral methods especially 5 
commend themselves to men of science familiar with the pres- 
ent state of knowledge concerning- brain-structure and brain- 
function in correlation with the mind. It has been demon- 
strated that the application of these methods has a tendency to 
nourish and stimulate the healthy growth of the same parts of 
the brain-structure which are the most completely developed 
in normal brains. In proof, I need refer only to the growing- 
scientific literature bearing- upon these facts and especially to 
the results of twenty years, or more, of experimental, anatom- 
ical and other researches of Dr. Elmer Gates, whose addresses 
before the Philosophical Society of Washing-ton, and before 
the public, under the auspices of scientific bodies, have attract- 
ed great attention. His unpublished manuscripts which have 
been read by a number of persons contain a mass of facts of 
special significance in this connection. 
Any one curious to know something more of the patient 
labors and vast mass of accumulated facts having a bearing 
upon these points in their pedagogical and bio-physiological 
relations should study the recent address delivered by Dr. 
Paul Flechsig upon his inauguration as Rector of the 
University of Leipzig.* 
For our purpose it is enough to say that Flechsig has 
observed the order and extent of the anatomical development 
of nerve-paths from the surface of the body to separate centres 
in the cerebral cortex. These centres after establishing a net- 
work of mutual correlating paths, send out other fibers to 
higher “centres of association” which in turn become connected 
by innumerable nerve-fibers in the medullary matter of the 
brain. About one-third of the cortex, according to Flechsig, 
is occupied with the sense-centres and their network of connect- 
ing and conducting fibers, while two-thirds of the cortex is 
occupied by four sections with a complex network including 
the higher centres not directly concerned with either sensorial 
impressions or motor impulses. It is this higher system, 
*Gehirn und Seele: Reden des antretenden Rectors, Leipzig. Dr. 
Paul Flechsig, 31st Oct. 1894. Druck von Alexander Edelmann. especially, which differentiates the brain of man from that of 
the lower animals. 
These centres of interpretation and “co-agitation” whose 
functions are parallel with, if not inseperable from our thought 
processes, so far as explored, are most intimately associated 
with mental growth and mental experiences. 
We have reason to believe that every mental experience 
contributes definitely to some part of the brain-growth, and, 
vice versa, the injury or stunting of these areas of the brain 
tend to impair mental functions. 
Dr. Flechsig’s researches show that morbid irritation of 
these areas leads to confusion of thought, and hallucination, 
and their obliteration causes the loss of language, principles 
of conduct, and the power to profit by experience, or to foresee 
the consequence of one’s actions. The lack of appropriate 
stimulation tends to impoverishment, non-development and 
atrophy of cerebral structure. 
We know that in deaf children, training in speech, lip-read- 
ing and hearing do not imply, necessarily, a highly cultivated 
and well-informed mind, but they do contribute to that 
cerebral health and cerebral development which renders pos- 
sible that training, moral, mental, and physical, which most 
closely approximates the normal standards in its results. 
Much of the work of the articulation teacher and the auric- 
ular teacher is preliminary to what the world calls instruction, 
and 3’et it is invaluable to the proper nourishment of cerebral 
structure, and fundamental to symmetrical individual develop- 
ment. 
Speech, as an individual possession and symbol or vehicle of 
thought, is far from the simple thing some take it to be, but, 
contrary to the popular belief, sound, strictly speaking, is not 
one of its elements. Sound and tone have a significance all 
their own, whether associated with words or not. The pecul- 
iar significance of sound and tone is lost for the absolutely 
deaf, and for this loss, nature and art can render no substitu- 
tionary compensation in any proper, scientific sense. But, 
fortunately, sound and tcne, though accompaniments of speech, 
aie merely incidental products, not essential to it, and foiming 7 
no part of it. They are, in fact, only aerial vibrations resulting 
from it, the thunder, which follows the lightning's flash. 
The memory and recognition of spoken words involve, 
chiefly, the power to recall and to exercise dynamic, muscular 
adjustments with the associated nerve-activities. The persist- 
ent impress of these features duly transmitted to the centres 
of speech, renders the spoken word in all its principal and 
essential features, precisely the same thing to the orally- 
educated deaf as to persons with normal hearing. 
Sound has a value as an adjunct to speech, though not a 
component part of it, to us who hear, because it comes so closely 
in touch with the speech-centre that it enables us to recall 
with ease the nerve-action and muscular adjustments involved 
in producing spoken words. 
In the case oj the orally-taught deaf \ any optical sign or image 
of the same muscular adjustments serves to pull the same trigger 
with the same effect. 
Speech, as a cerebral and mental function in the deaf, differs 
in no respect in its essence, composition and consequent effi- 
ciency from the same function in those who hear. 
Yet, because sound and tone have a value all their own, and 
because the nourishment of any sense has a beneficial effect 
even upon the cerebral structure of the interlacing fibers 
related to other functions, no reasonable effort should be spared 
in developing the hearing where traces of it are discoverable. 
It is asserted upon scientific authority that many persons are 
deaf from a deficiency in brain-structure or brain-development 
rather than from a lack of aural structure; and it is a demon- 
strated fact that in certain cases new hearing capacities have 
been developed where they did not previously exist. 
The bearing of all these facts upon educational ideals and 
practice it would be rash to even try to state; but in sub- 
primary work there is surely an interesting field for the con- 
structive talent of intelligent teachers to create a system of 
mind-building and brain-building, complete in its details, and 
capable of progressive expansion to meet the real needs of 
instruction at every point and in every stage of the child’s 
mental progress.