[29] Max Müller, however, is an exception. He has not made the smallest concession on this point in any of his works, including the last (_Three Lectures_, etc., cited above). He even maintains that a society of deaf-mutes would hardly rise above the intellectual level of a chimpanzee. “A man born dumb, notwithstanding his great cerebral mass and his inheritance of strong intellectual instincts, would be capable of few higher intellectual manifestations than an orang or a chimpanzee, if he were confined to the society of dumb associates” (p. 92). This thesis was attacked by thirteen critics, including Romanes, Galton, the Duke of Argyle, etc., but Max Müller meets them all and replies to them without flinching. It must be confessed that the arguments invoked by his correspondents are very unequal in merit. Some are convincing, others not. The Duke of Argyle says happily that “words are necessary to the progress of thought, but not at all to the _act_ of thinking.” Ebbels (p. 13, appendix) shows that Max Müller has unduly limited the question by excluding all processes anterior to the formation of concepts; we think in images; the transition from one form to another is imperceptible, and the faculty of abstraction does not appear suddenly along with the signs. On the other hand, we cannot admit as evidence the facts invoked by other correspondents, e. g., chess-players who combine and calculate solely by the aid of visual images; answers to letters, conceived in the first place as a general plan before they are developed in words, etc. It is forgotten that the persons capable of these operations have had long practice in verbal analysis, thereby attaining a high intellectual level. So, in the physical order, the practical gymnast, even when not executing any particular feat, possesses a suppleness and agility of body, due to exercise, which translates itself into all his movements. [30] _De l’Education des sourds-muets_, 2 vol., 1827. Notwithstanding its somewhat remote date, the book has lost none of its interest in this particular. It must also be remembered that institutions for deaf-mutes are far more numerous now than at the beginning of the century, and that the children are placed in them much earlier. Formerly they were abandoned to themselves or instructed very late; in proportion to their age, they presented better material for the study of their development. [31] Tylor, _Early History of Mankind_, p. 80. Romanes, _Mental Evolution in Man_, Chapter VI. [32] Kussmaul, _Die Störungen der Sprache_, Chapter xxx.