THE ABBÉ DE L'ÉPÉE.
It was well said, by one who has himself been a leader in one of the great philanthropic enterprises of the day,[1]that, "if the truthful history of any invention were written, we should find concerned in it the thinker, who dreams, without reaching the means of putting his imaginings in practice,—the mathematician, who estimates justly the forces at command, in their relation to each other, but who forgets to proportion them to the resistance to be encountered,—and so on, through the thousand intermediates between the dream and the perfect idea, till one comes who combines the result of the labor of all his predecessors, and gives to the invention new life, and with it his name."
Such was the history of the movement for the education of deaf-mutes. There had been a host of dreamy thinkers, who had invented, on paper, processes for the instruction of these unfortunates,—men like Cardan, Bonet, Amman, Dalgarno, and Lana-Terzi, whose theories, in after years, proved seeds of thought to more practical minds. There had been men who had experimented on the subject till they were satisfied that the deaf-mute could be taught, but who lacked the nerve, or the philanthropy, to apply the results they had attained to the general instruction of the deaf and dumb, or who carefully concealed their processes, that they might leave them as heir-looms to their families;—among the former may be reckoned Pedro de Ponce, Wallis, and Pietro da Castro; among the latter, Pereira and Braidwood.
Yet there was wanting the man of earnest philanthropic spirit and practical tact, who should glean from all these whatever of good there was in their theories, and apply it efficiently in the education of those who through all the generations since the flood had been dwellers in the silent land, cut off from intercourse with their fellow-men, and consigned alike by the philosopher's dictum and the theologian's decree to the idiot's life and the idiot's destiny.
It was to such a work that the Abbé de l'Epée consecrated his life. But he did more than this; he, too, was a discoverer, and to his mind was revealed, in all its fulness and force, that great principle which lies at the basis of the system of instruction which he initiated,—"that there is no more necessary or natural connection between abstract ideas and the articulate sounds which strike the ear, than there is between the same ideas and the written characters which address themselves to the eye." It was this principle, derided by the many, dimly perceived by the few, which led to the development of the sign-language, the means which God had appointed to unlock the darkened understanding of the deaf-mute, but which man, in his self-sufficiency and blindness, had overlooked.
It is interesting to trace the history of such a man,—to know something of his childhood,—to learn under what influences he was reared, to what temptations exposed,—to see the guiding hand of Providence shaping his course, subjecting him to the discipline of trial, thwarting his most cherished projects, crushing his fondest hopes, and all, that by these manifold crosses he may be the better prepared for the place for which God has destined him. We regret that so little is recorded of this truly great and good man, but we will lay that little before our readers.
Charles Michel de l'Épée was born at Versailles, November 5th, 1712. His father, who held the post of Architect to the King, in an age remarkable above any other in French history for the prevalence of immorality, which even the refinement and pretended sanctity of the court and nobility could not disguise,
- ↑ M. Edouard Seguin.
