To conclude, their mental feebleness, known since the days of antiquity by Aristotle, by the Roman law which dispossessed them of part of their civil rights, later on by many philosophers who refused even to concede them memory, arises from their inaptitude to transcend the inferior forms of abstraction and kindred operations. In regard to the events of ordinary life, in the domain of the concrete (admitting, as is not always done, that there are individual varieties, some being intelligent, and others stupid), deaf-mutes are sufficiently apt to seize and to comprehend the practical connexion between complex things.[33] But the world of higher concepts, moral, religious, cosmological, is closed to them. Observations to this effect are abundant, though here again—as must be insisted on—they reveal great individual differences. Thus, a deaf-mute whose friends had tried to inculcate in him a few religious notions, believed before he came under instruction that the Bible was a book that had been printed in heaven by workmen of Herculean strength. This was the sole interpretation he gave to the gestures of his parents, who endeavored to make him understand that the Bible contains a revelation, coming from an all-powerful God who is in heaven.[34] Another who was taken regularly to church on Sunday, and exhibited exemplary piety, only recognised in this ceremony an act of obedience to the clergy. There are many similar cases on record. Others on the contrary, seek to inquire into, and to penetrate, the nature of things. W. James[35] has published the autobiography of two deaf-mutes who became professors, one at the asylum of Washington, the other in California. The principal interest attaching to the first is the spontaneous appearance of the moral sense. After stealing small sums of money from the till of a merchant, he accidentally took a gold coin. Although ignorant of its value, he was seized with scruples, feeling “that it was not for a poor man like him, and that he had stolen _too much_.” He got rid of it as best he could, and never began again.