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As soon, however, as the school succeeds and becomes known, the blind, without distinction, -- the bright and the backward, the bold and the timid, -- resort to it, and then we have an opportunity of judging the whole class. Now it will be found, that, while the schools for the blind present a certain number of children who make more rapid progress in intellectual studies than the average of seeing children, they also present a much larger number who are decidedly inferior to them in physical and in mental vigor. If an exception be found to this, it will be in the Royal Institute at Paris, which has, within a few years, by means of the liberal patronage of the government, and the zeal and ability of its Director, Monsieur Dufau, resumed the place which it originally held in the front rank of excellence among establishments of this kind. But in that school a singular advantage is enjoyed, as far as the appearance of things goes; -- the scholars are received only at the age of twelve years; and a selection of less than two hundred is made from the great number of applicants which must be found in the whole population of France, for no other establishment exists there, while in the United States there are eight. We might as well take the average of bodily and mental vigor among the cadets at West Point as the standard whereby to measure the youth of the United States generally, as judge of the blind of France by the inmates of the Royal Institute of Paris.

After experience has shown us a fact, it is easy to see how we ought to have inferred its existence beforehand by a priori reasoning. The human mind is first developed solely by means of stimulus or excitement derived through the senses. Some of the senses excite only particular faculties of the mind, which cannot be excited and developed by any other sense; thus, the musical taste is developed by action of the hearing alone, nor can any other organ of sense do the duty of the ear by vicarious action.

Now the sense of sight is very important to our mental growth. In its direct action it is even more important than hearing, the chief action of which is indirect, giving us language, the most important tool for the mind to work with.

Sight not only contributes to the growth and development of the mind generally, but it addresses itself to several faculties in particular, which without it would never awake in this stage of being. Thus, the aesthetic sense, or taste for the beautiful in color and light and shade, with all the consequent pleasure and refinement which it gives, must ever lie as dormant in the mind of a blind man as in a tortoise. Nor is the effect of this confined to the mere knowing faculties, but it extends more or less to all the intellectual and even moral character; for who shall say how much our disposition to adore the Creator is strengthened by contemplation of the beauties and glories of his creation?

Blindness, then, always and necessarily cuts off some of the means by which alone certain intellectual faculties are developed and some mental qualities are formed. To suppose there can be a full and harmonious development of character without sight is to suppose that God gave us that noble sense quite superfluously.

But it is said, and with much plausibility, that the loss of one sense makes us exercise the others so continually and so effectually, as to acquire a power quite unknown to common persons. This is true, and it goes far to compensate the blind man whose pursuit is knowledge. He may learn vastly more of some subjects than other men, but there are capacities of his nature that can never he developed; perfect harmony can never be there, any more than perfect physical beauty and proportion.

This, however, is somewhat speculative reasoning, and there is no need of such to prove the proposition, that the blind, as a class, are inferior in mental power and ability to ordinary persons. It is useless to say one single word about the dependence of the mind upon the body in this state of existence; there can be no continuous mental health and vigor without bodily health and vigor. By comparing the mortality among 617 blind persons, and among 1380 young men in college, during a period of ten years, I find that the difference is as 98 to 44; that is to say, taking 1000 persons of each class and about the same age, and watching them through life, we shall find that when all the blind have died, there will still be about half of the seeing ones alive. In other words, the chance of life among the blind is only one half what it is among the seeing.

The data from which these inferences are drawn are indeed few, and perhaps are somewhat unfavorable to the blind, because the persons whom they are compared with, students in colleges, are generally select youth; but, after making all allowances, they fully confirm what would be the a priori inference, and what must be the opinion of observing persons, that sickness and mortality among the blind are much greater than among the seeing.