Helen Keller indeed, although blind, was able to learn to
speak by the education of the tactile motor sense. By placing the hand on
the vocal instrument she appreciated by the tactile motor sense the
movements associated with phonation and articulation. The tactile motor
sense by education replaced in her the auditory and visual senses. The
following physiological experiment throws light on this subject. A dog that
had been deprived of sight by removal of the eyes when it was a puppy found
its way about as well as a normal dog; but an animal made blind by removal
of the occipital lobes of the brain was quite stupid and had great
difficulty in finding its way about. Helen Keller's brain, as shown by her
accomplishments in later life, was a remarkable one; not long after birth
she became deaf and blind, consequently there was practically only one
avenue of intelligence left open for the education of that brain, viz. the
tactile kinaesthetic. But the tactile motor sense is the active sense that
waits upon and contributes to every other sense. The hand is the instrument
of the mind and the agent of the will; consequently the tactile motor sense
is intimately associated in its structural representation in the brain with
every other sense.
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