South Boston, to the accomplished principals and
teachers of both of which institutions I would acknowledge my
indebtedness for valuable reports and the information of various kinds
which they obligingly communicated to me at the time of my visits during
the past summer.

Dr. Howe, the accomplished director of the Asylum for the Blind, after
many years of experience and careful observation in this country and in
Europe, expresses the conviction that _the blind, as a class, are
inferior to other persons in mental power and ability_. The opinions put
forth in almost every report of the institutions for the blind in this
country, in almost all books on the subject, and even the doctor's
earlier writings, may be brought to disprove this statement. He is now,
nevertheless, fully convinced that it will be found true. This erroneous
conviction, every where so prevalent, may be accounted for from the fact
that none but intelligent parents of blind children could at first
comprehend the possibility of their being educated, and even _they_
would not think of trying the experiment except upon a child of more
than ordinary ability. As soon, however, as the experiment proved
successful, and institutions for the blind became generally known, the
blind, without distinction--the bright and the backward, the bold and
the timid--resorted to them, which gave an opportunity of judging of the
_whole class_. The result is, that now, 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 both
physical and mental vigor.

The loss of one sense makes us exercise the others so constantly and so
effectually as to acquire a power quite unknown to common persons. This
goes far to compensate the blind man who is in the pursuit of knowledge,
and enables him to learn vastly more of _some_ subjects than other men;
but there are capacities of his nature which can never be developed.
Perfect harmony in the exercise and development of his mental faculties
he can never possess, any more than he can exhibit perfect physical
beauty and proportion.

The proposition that the blind, _as a class_, are inferior in mental
power and ability to ordinary persons, has been established beyond a
doubt. Take an equal number of blind and seeing persons, of as nearly
the same age and situat