No less are we to be pitied if, in order to write, we must follow analytically the parts constituting the alphabetical signs. In fact the _effort_ which we believe to be a necessary accompaniment to learning to write is a purely artificial effort, allied, not to writing, but to the _methods_ by which it is taught.
Let us for a moment cast aside every dogma in this connection. Let us take no note of culture, or custom. We are not, here, interested in knowing how humanity began to write, nor what may have been the origin of writing itself. Let us put away the conviction, that long usage has given us, of the necessity of beginning writing by making vertical strokes; and let us try to be as clear and unprejudiced in spirit as the truth which, we are seeking.
"_Let us observe an individual who is writing, and let us seek to analyse the acts he performs in writing_," that is, the mechanical operations which enter into the execution of writing. This would be undertaking the _philosophical study of writing_, and it goes without saying that we should examine the individual who writes, not the _writing_; the _subject_, not the _object_. Many have begun with the object, examining the writing, and in this way many methods have been constructed.
But a method starting from the individual would be decidedly original--very different from other methods which preceded it. It would indeed signify a new era in writing, _based upon anthropology_.
In fact, when I undertook my experiments with normal children, if I had thought of giving a name to this new method of writing, I should have called it without knowing what the results would be, the _anthropological method_. Certainly, my studies in anthropology inspired the method, but experience has given me, as a surprise, another title which seems to me the natural one, "the method of _spontaneous_ writing."
While teaching deficient children I happened to observe the following fact: An idiot girl of eleven years, who was possessed of normal strength and motor power in her hands, could not learn to sew, or even to take the first step, darning, which consists in passing the needle first over, then under the woof, now taking up, now leaving, a number of threads.
