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Generally speaking, these descriptions will be found to meet the various degrees of idiotcy. Still there is nothing more difficult to define, nothing of which it is less possible to find a standard. The word 'idios' points to a human being isolated from his fellows, and no better term in the midst of the many used to designate his condition has been found than that of idiotcy. The words folly, imbecility, fatuity, stupidity, and others employed by various writers, are but different expressions of the same thing. "Amentia, imbecillitas, obliteration des faculties,' says M. Séguin, "sont autant de synonymes, plus ou moins laconiques, plus ou moins verbeux, surajoutées a l'énergique idios des Grecs, qui rest encore aujourd'hui intact, sans équivalent comme sans définition." Nor can any dimensions of the head, except in the extremest diminutiveness, nor other measurements often relied upon, be regarded as true criteria of idiotcy; though it is remarkably curious that in an immense number of cases examined by Dr. Down of Earlswood, as we shall see hereafter, the formation of the mouth was abnormal, and the face had unequal sides. The mental manifestations are not always regulated by the volume of the brain, but by its quality and condition, and those of the whole nervous system. The body is but the instrument, the mind the unseen musician, and the strings must be in tune, or no harmony can be produced by the most skilful hand. Thus the corporeal state of the idiot being disordered, discord results from the agency of the mind upon it. All that can be said of what the idiot really is terminates in this -- that an idiot is one wanting in power, greater or less, to develop and manifest the normal human faculties by reason of organic defects. The general peculiarities of body are all abormal, including health, temperament, members, as hands, wrists, legs, and feet. The nerves of motion and sensation are without due action. Hence arise irritability or apathy, spasms, epilepsy, and chorea. Hence also the prehension, touch, smell, hearing, feeding, mastication, deglutition, digestion, secretions, circulation, and speech are faulty, the last in many cases absent. Yet the inability to speak, though often apparent, is not always real. A boy who was never heard to utter an articulate sound, and had reached about fourteen years of age, was suddenly heard to chant a psalm in the night with correctness. Of course his teacher made use of this sudden exhibition, and he now speaks constantly. Another pupil, who had always been mute, was nevertheless brought to write legibly on a slate, and some one having rubbed out his writing in his absence, he became much excited, and angrily asked, 'Who rubbed out my slate?' These were the first words he had ever been heard to utter, but afterwards he became induced to speak.

As the bodily condition is abormal, so is the manifestation of mind in idiots. Attention, perception, will, comparison, judgment, combination, invention, foresight, and reflection are all imperfect in various degrees. Yet nothing further can be safely stated as a generalization, than that as a rule the perceptive powers are defective, the fancy frivolous, and the whole bearing more or less eccentric. Some are vociferous, grinning, and facetious; others mutter, mope, and sulk, and are very vicious. Again, many are mild, affectionate, and tractable, while others are violent, depraved, filthy, and repulsive. What the facetious will say no one can guess under any circumstances. One that was reproved by the clergyman for laughing in church, said, 'You should have looked at your book, and you would not have seen me.' Another, corrected for stealing, and asked to promise not to repeat the fault, replied, "I will not do so again, if you will give me everything I want." The ideas of these poor creatures have no definite regulation. Hence, joy, drollery, anger, sorrow, and loquacious nonsense alternate without reason. The classification of idiots is no easy task, and it is well said by Dr. Howe, that

'The highest of the lower class of idiots can hardly be distinguished from the fool; the least stupid of fools can hardly be distinguished from the simpleton; and the highest among simpletons stand very near the level of hundreds who pass in society for feeble-minded persons, but still for responsible free agents. These latter, indeed, are looked down upon by the crowd, but then the crowd is looked down upon by tall men, and these in their turn are looked down upon by the few intellectual giants of each generation who stand higher by the whole head and shoulders than the rest. This view of the gradation of intellect should teach us not only humility but humanity; and increase our interest in those who are only more unfortunate than we are, in that their capacity for seeing and understanding the wisdom, power, and love of our common Father, is more limited than ours, in this stage of our being.'

It may be added to what has been already said in the foregoing sketch of idiots, that some idiots actually possess special powers, only abnormal in being above the common standard as relates to music, the art of drawing or modelling, and in powers of memory and arithmetic, and instead of dulness, imperfection, and deprivation, have, in some direction or other, a strange exaltation.