A WAKING DREAM 209
A CHANT OF DARKNESS 229
ILLUSTRATIONS
HELEN KELLER IN HER STUDY _Frontispiece_
THE MEDALLION _Facing page_ 22
"LISTENING" TO THE TREES " " 70
THE LITTLE BOY NEXT DOOR " " 120
THE SEEING HAND
I
THE SEEING HAND
I HAVE just touched my dog. He was rolling on the grass, with pleasure
in every muscle and limb. I wanted to catch a picture of him in my
fingers, and I touched him as lightly as I would cobwebs; but lo, his
fat body revolved, stiffened and solidified into an upright position,
and his tongue gave my hand a lick! He pressed close to me, as if he
were fain to crowd himself into my hand. He loved it with his tail, with
his paw, with his tongue. If he could speak, I believe he would say with
me that paradise is attained by touch; for in touch is all love and
intelligence.
This small incident started me on a chat about hands, and if my chat is
fortunate I have to thank my dog-star. In any case, it is pleasant to
have something to talk about that no one else has monopolized; it is
like making a new path in the trackless woods, blazing the trail where
no foot has pressed before. I am glad to take you by the hand and lead
you along an untrodden way into a world where the hand is supreme. But
at the very outset we encounter a difficulty. You are so accustomed to
light, I fear you will stumble when I try to guide you through the land
of darkness and silence. The blind are not supposed to be the best of
guides. Still, though I cannot warrant not to lose you, I promise that
you shall not be led into fire or water, or fall into a deep pit. If
you will follow me patiently, you will find that "there's a sound so
fine, nothing lives 'twixt it and silence," and that there is more meant
in things than meets the eye.
My hand is to me what your hearing and sight together are to you. In
large measure we travel the same highways, read the same books, speak
the same language, yet our experiences are different. All my comings and
goings turn on the hand as on a pivot. It is the hand that binds me to
the world of men and women. The hand is my feeler with which I reach
through isolation and darkness and seize every pleasure, every activity
that my fingers encounter. With the dropping of a little word from
another's hand into mine, a slight flutter of the fingers, began the
intelligence, the joy, the fullness of my life. Like Job, I feel as if
a hand had made me, fashioned me together round about and moulded my
very soul.
In all my experiences and thoughts I am conscious of a hand. Whatever
moves me, whatever thrills me, is as a hand that touches me in the dark,
and that touch is my reality. You might as well say that a sight which
makes you glad, or a blow which brings the stinging tears to your eyes,
is unreal as to say that those impressions are unreal which I have
accumulated by means of touch. The delicate tremble of a butterfly's
wings in my hand, the soft petals of violets curling in the cool folds
of their leaves or lifting sweetly out of the meadow-grass, the clear,
firm outline of face and limb, the smooth arch of a horse's neck and
the velvety touch of his nose--all these, and a thousand resultant
combinations, which take shape in my mind, constitute my world.
Ideas make the world we live in, and impressions furnish ideas. My world
is built of touch-sensations, devoid of physical colour and sound; but
without colour and sound it breathes and throbs with life. Every object
is associated in my mind with tactual qualities which, combined in
countless ways, give me a sense of power, of beauty, or of incongruity:
for with my hands I can feel the comic as well as the beautiful in the
outward appearance of things. Remember that you, dependent on your
sight, do not realize how many things are tangible. All palpable things
are mobile or rigid, solid or liquid, big or small, warm or cold, and
these qualities are variously modified. The coolness of a water-lily
rounding into bloom is different from the coolness of an evening wind in
summer, and different again from the coolness of the rain that soaks
into the hearts of growing things and gives them life and body. The
velvet of the rose is not that of a ripe peach or of a baby's dimpled
cheek. The hardness of the rock is to the hardness of wood what a man's
deep bass is to a woman's voice when it is low. What I call beauty I
find in certain combinations of all these qualities, and is largely
derived from the flow of curved and straight lines which is over all
things.
"What does the straight line mean to you?" I think you will ask.
It _means_ several things. It symbolizes duty. It seems to have the
quality of inexorableness that duty has. When I have something to do
that must not be set aside, I feel as if I were going forward in a
straight line, bound to arrive somewhere, or go on forever without
swerving to the right or to the left.
That is what it means. To escape this moralizing you should ask, "How
does the straight line feel?" It feels, as I suppose it looks,
straight--a dull thought drawn out endlessly. Eloquence to the touch
resides not in straight lines, but in unstraight lines, or in many
curved and straight lines together. They appear and disappear, are now
deep, now shallow, now broken off or lengthened or swelling. They rise
and sink beneath my fingers, they are full of sudden starts and pauses,
and their variety is inexhaustible and wonderful. So you see I am not
shut out from the region of the beautiful, though my hand cannot
perceive the brilliant colours in the sunset or on the mountain, or
reach into the blue depths of the sky.
Physics tells me that I am well off in a world which, I am told, knows
neither cold nor sound, but is made in terms of size, shape, and
inherent qualities; for at least every object appears to my fingers
standing solidly right side up, and is not an inverted image on the
retina which, I understand, your brain is at infinite though unconscious
labour to set back on its feet. A tangible object passes complete into
my brain with the warmth of life upon it, and occupies the same place
that it does in space; for, without egotism, the mind is as large as the
universe. When I think of hills, I think of the upward strength I tread
upon. When water is the object of my thought, I feel the cool shock of
the plunge and the quick yielding of the waves that crisp and curl and
ripple about my body. The pleasing changes of rough and smooth, pliant
and rigid, curved and straight in the bark and branches of a tree give
the truth to my hand. The immovable rock, with its juts and warped
surface, bends beneath my fingers into all manner of grooves and
hollows. The bulge of a watermelon and the puffed-up rotundities of
squashes that sprout, bud, and ripen in that strange garden planted
somewhere behind my finger-tips are the ludicrous in my tactual memory
and imagination. My fingers are tickled to delight by the soft ripple
of a baby's laugh, and find amusement in the lusty crow of the barnyard
autocrat. Once I had a pet rooster that used to perch on my knee and
stretch his neck and crow. A bird in my hand was then worth two in
the--barnyard.
My fingers cannot, of course, get the impression of a large whole at a
glance; but I feel the parts, and my mind puts them together. I move
around my house, touching object after object in order, before I can
form an idea of the entire house. In other people's houses I can touch
only what is shown to me--the chief objects of interest, carvings on the
wall, or a curious architectural feature, exhibited like the family
album. Therefore a house with which I am not familiar has for me, at
first, no general effect or harmony of detail. It is not a complete
conception, but a collection of object-impressions which, as they come
to me, are disconnected and isolated. But my mind is full of
associations, sensations, theories, and with them it constructs the
house. The process reminds me of the building of Solomon's temple, where
was neither saw, nor hammer, nor any tool heard while the stones were
being laid one upon another. The silent worker is imagination which
decrees reality out of chaos.
Without imagination what a poor thing my world would be! My garden would
be a silent patch of earth strewn with sticks of a variety of shapes and
smells. But when the eye of my mind is opened to its beauty, the bare
ground brightens beneath my feet, and the hedge-row bursts into leaf,
and the rose-tree shakes its fragrance everywhere. I know how budding
trees look, and I enter into the amorous joy of the mating birds, and
this is the miracle of imagination.
Twofold is the miracle when, through my fingers, my imagination reaches
forth and meets the imagination of an artist which he has embodied in a
sculptured form. Although, compared with the life-warm, mobile face of a
friend, the marble is cold and pulseless and unresponsive, yet it is
beautiful to my hand. Its flowing curves and bendings are a real
pleasure; only breath is wanting; but under the spell of the imagination
the marble thrills and becomes the divine reality of the ideal.
Imagination puts a sentiment into every line and curve, and the statue
in my touch is indeed the goddess herself who breathes and moves and
enchants.
It is true, however, that some sculptures, even recognized masterpieces,
do not please my hand. When I touch what there is of the Winged Victory,
it reminds me at first of a headless, limbless dream that flies towards
me in an unrestful sleep. The garments of the Victory thrust stiffly out
behind, and do not resemble garments that I have felt flying,
fluttering, folding, spreading in the wind. But imagination fulfils
these imperfections, and straightway the Victory becomes a powerful and
spirited figure with the sweep of sea-winds in her robes and the
splendour of conquest in her wings.
I find in a beautiful statue perfection of bodily form, the qualities of
balance and completeness. The Minerva, hung with a web of poetical
allusion, gives me a sense of exhilaration that is almost physical; and
I like the luxuriant, wavy hair of Bacchus and Apollo, and the wreath of
ivy, so suggestive of pagan holidays.
So imagination crowns the experience of my hands. And they learned their
cunning from the wise hand of another, which, itself guided by
imagination, led me safely in paths that I knew not, made darkness light
before me, and made crooked ways straight.
THE HANDS OF OTHERS
II
THE HANDS OF OTHERS
THE warmth and protectiveness of the hand are most homefelt to me who
have always looked to it for aid and joy. I understand perfectly how the
Psalmist can lift up his voice with strength and gladness, singing, "I
put my trust in the Lord at all times, and his hand shall uphold me, and
I shall dwell in safety." In the strength of the human hand, too, there
is something divine. I am told that the glance of a beloved eye thrills
one from a distance; but there is no distance in the touch of a beloved
hand. Even the letters I receive are--
Kind letters that betray the heart's deep history,
In which we feel the presence of a hand.
It is interesting to observe the differences in the hands of people.
They show all kinds of vitality, energy, stillness, and cordiality. I
never realized how living the hand is until I saw those chill plaster
images in Mr. Hutton's collection of casts. The hand I know in life has
the fullness of blood in its veins, and is elastic with spirit. How
different dear Mr. Hutton's hand was from its dull, insensate image! To
me the cast lacks the very form of the hand. Of the many casts in Mr.
Hutton's collection I did not recognize any, not even my own. But a
loving hand I never forget. I remember in my fingers the large hands of
Bishop Brooks, brimful of tenderness and a strong man's joy. If you were
deaf and blind, and could have held Mr. Jefferson's hand, you would have
seen in it a face and heard a kind voice unlike any other you have
known. Mark Twain's hand is full of whimsies and the drollest humours,
and while you hold it the drollery changes to sympathy and championship.
[Illustration: Copyright, 1907, by the Whitman Studio
The Medallion
The bas-relief on the wall is a portrait of the Queen Dowager of Spain,
which Her Majesty had made for Miss Keller
To face page 22]
I am told that the words I have just written do not "describe" the hands
of my friends, but merely endow them with the kindly human qualities
which I know they possess, and which language conveys in abstract words.
The criticism implies that I am not giving the primary truth of what I
feel; but how otherwise do descriptions in books I read, written by men
who can see, render the visible look of a face? I read that a face is
strong, gentle; that it is full of patience, of intellect; that it is
fine, sweet, noble, beautiful. Have I not the same right to use these
words in describing what I feel as you have in describing what you see?
They express truly what I feel in the hand. I am seldom conscious of
physical qualities, and I do not remember whether the fingers of a hand
are short or long, or the skin is moist or dry. No more can you, without
conscious effort, recall the details of a face, even when you have seen
it many times. If you do recall the features, and say that an eye is
blue, a chin sharp, a nose short, or a cheek sunken, I fancy that you do
not succeed well in giving the impression of the person,--not so well
as when you interpret at once to the heart the essential moral qualities
of the face--its humour, gravity, sadness, spirituality. If I should
tell you in physical terms how a hand feels, you would be no wiser for
my account than a blind man to whom you describe a face in detail.
Remember that when a blind man recovers his sight, he does not recognize
the commonest thing that has been familiar to his touch, the dearest
face intimate to his fingers, and it does not help him at all that
things and people have been described to him again and again. So you,
who are untrained of touch, do not recognize a hand by the grasp; and
so, too, any description I might give would fail to make you acquainted
with a friendly hand which my fingers have often folded about, and
which my affection translates to my memory.
I cannot describe hands under any class or type; there is no democracy
of hands. Some hands tell me that they do everything with the maximum of
bustle and noise. Other hands are fidgety and unadvised, with nervous,
fussy fingers which indicate a nature sensitive to the little pricks of
daily life. Sometimes I recognize with foreboding the kindly but stupid
hand of one who tells with many words news that is no news. I have met a
bishop with a jocose hand, a humourist with a hand of leaden gravity, a
man of pretentious valour with a timorous hand, and a quiet, apologetic
man with a fist of iron. When I was a little girl I was taken to see[A]
a woman who was blind and paralysed. I shall never forget how she held
out her small, trembling hand and pressed sympathy into mine. My eyes
fill with tears as I think of her. The weariness, pain, darkness, and
sweet patience were all to be felt in her thin, wasted, groping, loving
hand.
Few people who do not know me will understand, I think, how much I get
of the mood of a friend who is engaged in oral conversation with
somebody else. My hand follows his motions; I touch his hand, his arm,
his face. I can tell when he is full of glee over a good joke which has
not been repeated to me, or when he is telling a lively story. One of
my friends is rather aggressive, and his hand always announces the
coming of a dispute. By his impatient jerk I know he has argument ready
for some one. I have felt him start as a sudden recollection or a new
idea shot through his mind. I have felt grief in his hand. I have felt
his soul wrap itself in darkness majestically as in a garment. Another
friend has positive, emphatic hands which show great pertinacity of
opinion. She is the only person I know who emphasizes her spelled words
and accents them as she emphasizes and accents her spoken words when I
read her lips. I like this varied emphasis better than the monotonous
pound of unmodulated people who hammer their meaning into my palm.
Some hands, when they clasp yours, beam and bubble over with gladness.
They throb and expand with life. Strangers have clasped my hand like
that of a long-lost sister. Other people shake hands with me as if with
the fear that I may do them mischief. Such persons hold out civil
finger-tips which they permit you to touch, and in the moment of
contract they retreat, and inwardly you hope that you will not be called
upon again to take that hand of "dormouse valour." It betokens a prudish
mind, ungracious pride, and not seldom mistrust. It is the antipode to
the hand of those who have large, lovable natures.
The handshake of some people makes you think of accident and sudden
death. Contrast this ill-boding hand with the quick, skilful, quiet hand
of a nurse whom I remember with affection because she took the best
care of my teacher. I have clasped the hands of some rich people that
spin not and toil not, and yet are not beautiful. Beneath their soft,
smooth roundness what a chaos of undeveloped character!
I am sure there is no hand comparable to the physician's in patient
skill, merciful gentleness and splendid certainty. No wonder that Ruskin
finds in the sure strokes of the surgeon the perfection of control and
delicate precision for the artist to emulate. If the physician is a man
of great nature, there will be healing for the spirit in his touch. This
magic touch of well-being was in the hand of a dear friend of mine who
was our doctor in sickness and health. His happy cordial spirit did his
patients good whether they needed medicine or not.
As there are many beauties of the face, so the beauties of the hand are
many. Touch has its ecstasies. The hands of people of strong
individuality and sensitiveness are wonderfully mobile. In a glance of
their finger-tips they express many shades of thought. Now and again I
touch a fine, graceful, supple-wristed hand which spells with the same
beauty and distinction that you must see in the handwriting of some
highly cultivated people. I wish you could see how prettily little
children spell in my hand. They are wild flowers of humanity, and their
finger motions wild flowers of speech.
All this is my private science of palmistry, and when I tell your
fortune it is by no mysterious intuition or gipsy witchcraft, but by
natural, explicable recognition of the embossed character in your hand.
Not only is the hand as easy to recognize as the face, but it reveals
its secrets more openly and unconsciously. People control their
countenances, but the hand is under no such restraint. It relaxes and
becomes listless when the spirit is low and dejected; the muscles
tighten when the mind is excited or the heart glad; and permanent
qualities stand written on it all the time.
FOOTNOTE:
[A] The excellent proof-reader has put a query to my use of the word
"see." If I had said "visit," he would have asked no questions, yet what
does "visit" mean but "see" (_visitare_)? Later I will try to defend
myself for using as much of the English language as I have succeeded in
learning.
THE HAND OF THE RACE
III
THE HAND OF THE RACE
LOOK in your "Century Dictionary," or if you are blind, ask your teacher
to do it for you, and learn how many idioms are made on the idea of
hand, and how many words are formed from the Latin root _manus_--enough
words to name all the essential affairs of life. "Hand," with quotations
and compounds, occupies twenty-four columns, eight pages of this
dictionary. The hand is defined as "the organ of apprehension." How
perfectly the definition fits my case in both senses of the word
"apprehend"! With my hand I seize and hold all that I find in the three
worlds--physical, intellectual, and spiritual.
Think how man has regarded the world in terms of the hand. All life is
divided between what lies _on one hand_ and on the other. The products
of skill are _manu_factures. The conduct of affairs is _man_agement.
History seems to be the record--alas for our chronicles of war!--of the
_man_oeuvres of armies. But the history of peace, too, the narrative of
labour in the field, the forest, and the vineyard, is written in the
victorious sign _manual_--the sign of the hand that has conquered the
wilderness. The labourer himself is called a _hand_. In _man_acle and
_manu_mission we read the story of human slavery and freedom.
The minor idioms are myriad; but I will not recall too many, lest you
cry, "Hands off!" I cannot desist, however, from this word-game until I
have set down a few. Whatever is not one's own by first possession is
_second-hand_. That is what I am told my knowledge is. But my
well-meaning friends come to my defence, and, not content with endowing
me with natural _first-hand_ knowledge which is rightfully mine, ascribe
to me a preternatural sixth sense and credit to miracles and heaven-sent
compensations all that I have won and discovered with my good right
hand. And with my left hand too; for with that I read, and it is as true
and honourable as the other. By what half-development of human power has
the left hand been neglected? When we arrive at the acme of civilization
shall we not all be ambidextrous, and in our _hand-to-hand_ contests
against difficulties shall we not be doubly triumphant? It occurs to me,
by the way, that when my teacher was training my unreclaimed spirit, her
struggle against the powers of darkness, with the stout arm of
discipline and the light of the manual alphabet, was in two senses a
hand-to-hand conflict.
No essay would be complete without quotations from Shakspere. In the
field which, in the presumption of my youth, I thought was my own he has
reaped before me. In almost every play there are passages where the hand
plays a part. Lady Macbeth's heart-broken soliloquy over her little
hand, from which all the perfumes of Arabia will not wash the stain, is
the most pitiful moment in the tragedy. Mark Antony rewards Scarus, the
bravest of his soldiers, by asking Cleopatra to give him her hand:
"Commend unto his lips thy favouring hand." In a different mood he is
enraged because Thyreus, whom he despises, has presumed to kiss the hand
of the queen, "my playfellow, the kingly seal of high hearts." When
Cleopatra is threatened with the humiliation of gracing Cæsar's triumph,
she snatches a dagger, exclaiming, "I will trust my resolution and my
good hands." With the same swift instinct, Cassius trusts to his hands
when he stabs Cæsar: "Speak, hands, for me!" "Let me kiss your hand,"
says the blind Gloster to Lear. "Let me wipe it first," replies the
broken old king; "it smells of mortality." How charged is this single
touch with sad meaning! How it opens our eyes to the fearful purging
Lear has undergone, to learn that royalty is no defence against
ingratitude and cruelty! Gloster's exclamation about his son, "Did I but
live to see thee in my touch, I'd say I had eyes again," is as true to a
pulse within me as the grief he feels. The ghost in "Hamlet" recites the
wrongs from which springs the tragedy:
Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand.
At once of life, of crown, of queen dispatch'd.
How that passage in "Othello" stops your breath--that passage full of
bitter double intention in which Othello's suspicion tips with evil what
he says about Desdemona's hand; and she in innocence answers only the
innocent meaning of his words: "For 'twas that hand that gave away my
heart."
Not all Shakspere's great passages about the hand are tragic. Remember
the light play of words in "Romeo and Juliet" where the dialogue, flying
nimbly back and forth, weaves a pretty sonnet about the hand. And who
knows the hand, if not the lover?
The touch of the hand is in every chapter of the Bible. Why, you could
almost rewrite Exodus as the story of the hand. Everything is done by
the hand of the Lord and of Moses. The oppression of the Hebrews is
translated thus: "The hand of Pharaoh was heavy upon the Hebrews." Their
departure out of the land is told in these vivid words: "The Lord
brought the children of Israel out of the house of bondage with a strong
hand and a stretched-out arm." At the stretching out of the hand of
Moses the waters of the Red Sea part and stand all on a heap. When the
Lord lifts his hand in anger, thousands perish in the wilderness. Every
act, every decree in the history of Israel, as indeed in the history of
the human race, is sanctioned by the hand. Is it not used in the great
moments of swearing, blessing, cursing, smiting, agreeing, marrying,
building, destroying? Its sacredness is in the law that no sacrifice is
valid unless the sacrificer lay his hand upon the head of the victim.
The congregation lay their hands on the heads of those who are sentenced
to death. How terrible the dumb condemnation of their hands must be to
the condemned! When Moses builds the altar on Mount Sinai, he is
commanded to use no tool, but rear it with his own hands. Earth, sea,
sky, man, and all lower animals are holy unto the Lord because he has
formed them with his hand. When the Psalmist considers the heavens and
the earth, he exclaims: "What is man, O Lord, that thou art mindful of
him? For thou hast made him to have dominion over the works of thy
hands." The supplicating gesture of the hand always accompanies the
spoken prayer, and with clean hands goes the pure heart.
Christ comforted and blessed and healed and wrought many miracles with
his hands. He touched the eyes of the blind, and they were opened. When
Jairus sought him, overwhelmed with grief, Jesus went and laid his hands
on the ruler's daughter, and she awoke from the sleep of death to her
father's love. You also remember how he healed the crooked woman. He
said to her, "Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity," and he laid
his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she
glorified God.
Look where we will, we find the hand in time and history, working,
building, inventing, bringing civilization out of barbarism. The hand
symbolizes power and the excellence of work. The mechanic's hand, that
minister of elemental forces, the hand that hews, saws, cuts, builds, is
useful in the world equally with the delicate hand that paints a wild
flower or moulds a Grecian urn, or the hand of a statesman that writes a
law. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of thee." Blessed
be the hand! Thrice blessed be the hands that work!
THE POWER OF TOUCH
IV
THE POWER OF TOUCH
SOME months ago, in a newspaper which announced the publication of the
"Matilda Ziegler Magazine for the Blind," appeared the following
paragraph:
"Many poems and stories must be omitted because they deal with sight.
Allusion to moonbeams, rainbows, starlight, clouds, and beautiful
scenery may not be printed, because they serve to emphasize the blind
man's sense of his affliction."
That is to say, I may not talk about beautiful mansions and gardens
because I am poor. I may not read about Paris and the West Indies
because I cannot visit them in their territorial reality. I may not
dream of heaven because it is possible that I may never go there. Yet a
venturesome spirit impels me to use words of sight and sound whose
meaning I can guess only from analogy and fancy. This hazardous game is
half the delight, the frolic, of daily life. I glow as I read of
splendours which the eye alone can survey. Allusions to moonbeams and
clouds do not emphasize the sense of my affliction: they carry my soul
beyond affliction's narrow actuality.
Critics delight to tell us what we cannot do. They assume that blindness
and deafness sever us completely from the things which the seeing and
the hearing enjoy, and hence they assert we have no moral right to talk
about beauty, the skies, mountains, the song of birds, and colours. They
declare that the very sensations we have from the sense of touch are
"vicarious," as though our friends felt the sun for us! They deny _a
priori_ what they have not seen and I have felt. Some brave doubters
have gone so far even as to deny my existence. In order, therefore, that
I may know that I exist, I resort to Descartes's method: "I think,
therefore I am." Thus I am metaphysically established, and I throw upon
the doubters the burden of proving my non-existence. When we consider
how little has been found out about the mind, is it not amazing that any
one should presume to define what one can know or cannot know? I admit
that there are innumerable marvels in the visible universe unguessed by
me. Likewise, O confident critic, there are a myriad sensations
perceived by me of which you do not dream.
Necessity gives to the eye a precious power of seeing, and in the same
way it gives a precious power of feeling to the whole body. Sometimes it
seems as if the very substance of my flesh were so many eyes looking out
at will upon a world new created every day. The silence and darkness
which are said to shut me in, open my door most hospitably to countless
sensations that distract, inform, admonish, and amuse. With my three
trusty guides, touch, smell, and taste, I make many excursions into the
borderland of experience which is in sight of the city of Light. Nature
accommodates itself to every man's necessity. If the eye is maimed, so
that it does not see the beauteous face of day, the touch becomes more
poignant and discriminating. Nature proceeds through practice to
strengthen and augment the remaining senses. For this reason the blind
often hear with greater ease and distinctness than other people. The
sense of smell becomes almost a new faculty to penetrate the tangle and
vagueness of things. Thus, according to an immutable law, the senses
assist and reinforce one another.
It is not for me to say whether we see best with the hand or the eye. I
only know that the world I see with my fingers is alive, ruddy, and
satisfying. Touch brings the blind many sweet certainties which our more
fortunate fellows miss, because their sense of touch is uncultivated.
When they look at things, they put their hands in their pockets. No
doubt that is one reason why their knowledge is often so vague,
inaccurate, and useless. It is probable, too, that our knowledge of
phenomena beyond the reach of the hand is equally imperfect. But, at all
events, we behold them through a golden mist of fantasy.
There is nothing, however, misty or uncertain about what we can touch.
Through the sense of touch I know the faces of friends, the illimitable
variety of straight and curved lines, all surfaces, the exuberance of
the soil, the delicate shapes of flowers, the noble forms of trees, and
the range of mighty winds. Besides objects, surfaces, and atmospherical
changes, I perceive countless vibrations. I derive much knowledge of
everyday matter from the jars and jolts which are to be felt everywhere
in the house.
Footsteps, I discover, vary tactually according to the age, the sex, and
the manners of the walker. It is impossible to mistake a child's patter
for the tread of a grown person. The step of the young man, strong and
free, differs from the heavy, sedate tread of the middle-aged, and from
the step of the old man, whose feet drag along the floor, or beat it
with slow, faltering accents. On a bare floor a girl walks with a rapid,
elastic rhythm which is quite distinct from the graver step of the
elderly woman. I have laughed over the creak of new shoes and the
clatter of a stout maid performing a jig in the kitchen. One day, in the
dining-room of an hotel, a tactual dissonance arrested my attention. I
sat still and listened with my feet. I found that two waiters were
walking back and forth, but not with the same gait. A band was playing,
and I could feel the music-waves along the floor. One of the waiters
walked in time to the band, graceful and light, while the other
disregarded the music and rushed from table to table to the beat of some
discord in his own mind. Their steps reminded me of a spirited war-steed
harnessed with a cart-horse.
Often footsteps reveal in some measure the character and the mood of the
walker. I feel in them firmness and indecision, hurry and deliberation,
activity and laziness, fatigue, carelessness, timidity, anger, and
sorrow. I am most conscious of these moods and traits in persons with
whom I am familiar.
Footsteps are frequently interrupted by certain jars and jerks, so that
I know when one kneels, kicks, shakes something, sits down, or gets up.
Thus I follow to some extent the actions of people about me and the
changes of their postures. Just now a thick, soft patter of bare, padded
feet and a slight jolt told me that my dog had jumped on the chair to
look out of the window. I do not, however, allow him to go
uninvestigated; for occasionally I feel the same motion, and find him,
not on the chair, but trespassing on the sofa.
When a carpenter works in the house or in the barn near by, I know by
the slanting, up-and-down, toothed vibration, and the ringing concussion
of blow upon blow, that he is sawing or hammering. If I am near enough,
a certain vibration, travelling back and forth along a wooden surface,
brings me the information that he is using a plane.
A slight flutter on the rug tells me that a breeze has blown my papers
off the table. A round thump is a signal that a pencil has rolled on the
floor. If a book falls, it gives a flat thud. A wooden rap on the
balustrade announces that dinner is ready. Many of these vibrations are
obliterated out of doors. On a lawn or the road, I can feel only
running, stamping, and the rumble of wheels.
By placing my hand on a person's lips and throat, I gain an idea of many
specific vibrations, and interpret them: a boy's chuckle, a man's
"Whew!" of surprise, the "Hem!" of annoyance or perplexity, the moan of
pain, a scream, a whisper, a rasp, a sob, a choke, and a gasp. The
utterances of animals, though wordless, are eloquent to me--the cat's
purr, its mew, its angry, jerky, scolding spit; the dog's bow-wow of
warning or of joyous welcome, its yelp of despair, and its contented
snore; the cow's moo; a monkey's chatter; the snort of a horse; the
lion's roar, and the terrible snarl of the tiger. Perhaps I ought to
add, for the benefit of the critics and doubters who may peruse this
essay, that with my own hands I have felt all these sounds. From my
childhood to the present day I have availed myself of every opportunity
to visit zoological gardens, menageries, and the circus, and all the
animals, except the tiger, have talked into my hand. I have touched the
tiger only in a museum, where he is as harmless as a lamb. I have,
however, heard him talk by putting my hand on the bars of his cage. I
have touched several lions in the flesh, and felt them roar royally,
like a cataract over rocks.
To continue, I know the _plop_ of liquid in a pitcher. So if I spill my
milk, I have not the excuse of ignorance. I am also familiar with the
pop of a cork, the sputter of a flame, the tick-tack of the clock, the
metallic swing of the windmill, the laboured rise and fall of the pump,
the voluminous spurt of the hose, the deceptive tap of the breeze at
door and window, and many other vibrations past computing.
There are tactual vibrations which do not belong to skin-touch. They
penetrate the skin, the nerves, the bones, like pain, heat, and cold.
The beat of a drum smites me through from the chest to the
shoulder-blades. The din of the train, the bridge, and grinding
machinery retains its "old-man-of-the-sea" grip upon me long after its
cause has been left behind. If vibration and motion combine in my touch
for any length of time, the earth seems to run away while I stand still.
When I step off the train, the platform whirls round, and I find it
difficult to walk steadily.
Every atom of my body is a vibroscope. But my sensations are not
infallible. I reach out, and my fingers meet something furry, which
jumps about, gathers itself together as if to spring, and acts like an
animal. I pause a moment for caution. I touch it again more firmly, and
find it is a fur coat fluttering and flapping in the wind. To me, as to
you, the earth seems motionless, and the sun appears to move; for the
rays of the afternoon withdraw more and more, as they touch my face,
until the air becomes cool. From this I understand how it is that the
shore seems to recede as you sail away from it. Hence I feel no
incredulity when you say that parallel lines appear to converge, and the
earth and sky to meet. My few senses long ago revealed to me their
imperfections and deceptivity.
Not only are the senses deceptive, but numerous usages in our language
indicate that people who have five senses find it difficult to keep
their functions distinct. I understand that we hear views, see tones,
taste music. I am told that voices have colour. Tact, which I have
supposed to be a matter of nice perception, turns out to be a matter of
taste. Judging from the large use of the word, taste appears to be the
most important of all the senses. Taste governs the great and small
conventions of life. Certainly the language of the senses is full of
contradictions, and my fellows who have five doors to their house are
not more surely at home in themselves than I. May I not, then, be
excused if this account of my sensations lacks precision?
THE FINER VIBRATIONS
V
THE FINER VIBRATIONS
I HAVE spoken of the numerous jars and jolts which daily minister to my
faculties. The loftier and grander vibrations which appeal to my
emotions are varied and abundant. I listen with awe to the roll of the
thunder and the muffled avalanche of sound when the sea flings itself
upon the shore. And I love the instrument by which all the diapasons of
the ocean are caught and released in surging floods--the many-voiced
organ. If music could be seen, I could point where the organ-notes go,
as they rise and fall, climb up and up, rock and sway, now loud and
deep, now high and stormy, anon soft and solemn, with lighter
vibrations interspersed between and running across them. I should say
that organ-music fills to an ecstasy the act of feeling.
There is tangible delight in other instruments, too. The violin seems
beautifully alive as it responds to the lightest wish of the master. The
distinction between its notes is more delicate than between the notes of
the piano.
I enjoy the music of the piano most when I touch the instrument. If I
keep my hand on the piano-case, I detect tiny quavers, returns of
melody, and the hush that follows. This explains to me how sound can die
away to the listening ear:
. . . How thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
I am able to follow the dominant spirit and mood of the music. I catch
the joyous dance as it bounds over the keys, the slow dirge, the
reverie. I thrill to the fiery sweep of notes crossed by thunderous
tones in the "Walküre," where _Wotan_ kindles the dread flames that
guard the sleeping _Brunhild_. How wonderful is the instrument on which
a great musician sings with his hands! I have never succeeded in
distinguishing one composition from another. I think this is impossible;
but the concentration and strain upon my attention would be so great
that I doubt if the pleasure derived would be commensurate to the
effort.
Nor can I distinguish easily a tune that is sung. But by placing my hand
on another's throat and cheek, I enjoy the changes of the voice. I know
when it is low or high, clear or muffled, sad or cheery. The thin,
quavering sensation of an old voice differs in my touch from the
sensation of a young voice. A Southerner's drawl is quite unlike the
Yankee twang. Sometimes the flow and ebb of a voice is so enchanting
that my fingers quiver with exquisite pleasure, even if I do not
understand a word that is spoken.
On the other hand, I am exceedingly sensitive to the harshness of noises
like grinding, scraping, and the hoarse creak of rusty locks.
Fog-whistles are my vibratory nightmares. I have stood near a bridge in
process of construction, and felt the tactual din, the rattle of heavy
masses of stone, the roll of loosened earth, the rumble of engines, the
dumping of dirt-cars, the triple blows of vulcan hammers. I can also
smell the fire-pots, the tar and cement. So I have a vivid idea of
mighty labours in steel and stone, and I believe that I am acquainted
with all the fiendish noises which can be made by man or machinery. The
whack of heavy falling bodies, the sudden shivering splinter of chopped
logs, the crystal shatter of pounded ice, the crash of a tree hurled to
the earth by a hurricane, the irrational, persistent chaos of noise made
by switching freight-trains, the explosion of gas, the blasting of
stone, and the terrific grinding of rock upon rock which precedes the
collapse--all these have been in my touch-experience, and contribute to
my idea of Bedlam, of a battle, a waterspout, an earthquake, and other
enormous accumulations of sound.
Touch brings me into contact with the traffic and manifold activity of
the city. Besides the bustle and crowding of people and the nondescript
grating and electric howling of street-cars, I am conscious of
exhalations from many different kinds of shops; from automobiles, drays,
horses, fruit stands, and many varieties of smoke.
Odours strange and musty,
The air sharp and dusty
With lime and with sand,
That no one can stand,
Make the street impassable,
The people irascible,
Until every one cries,
As he trembling goes
With the sight of his eyes
And the scent of his nose
Quite stopped--or at least much diminished--
"Gracious! when will this city be finished?"[B]
[Illustration: Copyright, 1907, by The Whitman Studio
"Listening" to the Trees
To face page 70]
The city is interesting; but the tactual silence of the country is
always most welcome after the din of town and the irritating concussions
of the train. How noiseless and undisturbing are the demolition, the
repairs and the alterations, of nature! With no sound of hammer or saw
or stone severed from stone, but a music of rustles and ripe thumps on
the grass come the fluttering leaves and mellow fruits which the wind
tumbles all day from the branches. Silently all droops, all withers, all
is poured back into the earth that it may recreate; all sleeps while the
busy architects of day and night ply their silent work elsewhere. The
same serenity reigns when all at once the soil yields up a newly wrought
creation. Softly the ocean of grass, moss, and flowers rolls surge upon
surge across the earth. Curtains of foliage drape the bare branches.
Great trees make ready in their sturdy hearts to receive again birds
which occupy their spacious chambers to the south and west. Nay, there
is no place so lowly that it may not lodge some happy creature. The
meadow brook undoes its icy fetters with rippling notes, gurgles, and
runs free. And all this is wrought in less than two months to the music
of nature's orchestra, in the midst of balmy incense.
The thousand soft voices of the earth have truly found their way to
me--the small rustle in tufts of grass, the silky swish of leaves, the
buzz of insects, the hum of bees in blossoms I have plucked, the flutter
of a bird's wings after his bath, and the slender rippling vibration
of water running over pebbles. Once having been felt, these loved voices
rustle, buzz, hum, flutter, and ripple in my thought forever, an undying
part of happy memories.
Between my experiences and the experiences of others there is no gulf of
mute space which I may not bridge. For I have endlessly varied,
instructive contacts with all the world, with life, with the atmosphere
whose radiant activity enfolds us all. The thrilling energy of the
all-encasing air is warm and rapturous. Heat-waves and sound-waves play
upon my face in infinite variety and combination, until I am able to
surmise what must be the myriad sounds that my senseless ears have not
heard.
The air varies in different regions, at different seasons of the year,
and even different hours of the day. The odorous, fresh sea-breezes are
distinct from the fitful breezes along river banks, which are humid and
freighted with inland smells. The bracing, light, dry air of the
mountains can never be mistaken for the pungent salt air of the ocean.
The air of winter is dense, hard, compressed. In the spring it has new
vitality. It is light, mobile, and laden with a thousand palpitating
odours from earth, grass, and sprouting leaves. The air of midsummer is
dense, saturated, or dry and burning, as if it came from a furnace. When
a cool breeze brushes the sultry stillness, it brings fewer odours than
in May, and frequently the odour of a coming tempest. The avalanche of
coolness which sweeps through the low-hanging air bears little
resemblance to the stinging coolness of winter.
The rain of winter is raw, without odour, and dismal. The rain of spring
is brisk, fragrant, charged with life-giving warmth. I welcome it
delightedly as it visits the earth, enriches the streams, waters the
hills abundantly, makes the furrows soft with showers for the seed,
elicits a perfume which I cannot breathe deep enough. Spring rain is
beautiful, impartial, lovable. With pearly drops it washes every leaf on
tree and bush, ministers equally to salutary herbs and noxious growths,
searches out every living thing that needs its beneficence.
The senses assist and reinforce each other to such an extent that I am
not sure whether touch or smell tells me the most about the world.
Everywhere the river of touch is joined by the brooks of
odour-perception. Each season has its distinctive odours. The spring is
earthy and full of sap. July is rich with the odour of ripening grain
and hay. As the season advances, a crisp, dry, mature odour
predominates, and golden-rod, tansy, and everlastings mark the onward
march of the year. In autumn, soft, alluring scents fill the air,
floating from thicket, grass, flower, and tree, and they tell me of time
and change, of death and life's renewal, desire and its fulfilment.
FOOTNOTE:
[B] George Arnold.
SMELL, THE FALLEN ANGEL
VI
SMELL, THE FALLEN ANGEL
FOR some inexplicable reason the sense of smell does not hold the high
position it deserves among its sisters. There is something of the fallen
angel about it. When it woos us with woodland scents and beguiles us
with the fragrance of lovely gardens, it is admitted frankly to our
discourse. But when it gives us warning of something noxious in our
vicinity, it is treated as if the demon had got the upper hand of the
angel, and is relegated to outer darkness, punished for its faithful
service. It is most difficult to keep the true significance of words
when one discusses the prejudices of mankind, and I find it hard to give
an account of odour-perceptions which shall be at once dignified and
truthful.
In my experience smell is most important, and I find that there is high
authority for the nobility of the sense which we have neglected and
disparaged. It is recorded that the Lord commanded that incense be burnt
before him continually with a sweet savour. I doubt if there is any
sensation arising from sight more delightful than the odours which
filter through sun-warmed, wind-tossed branches, or the tide of scents
which swells, subsides, rises again wave on wave, filling the wide world
with invisible sweetness. A whiff of the universe makes us dream of
worlds we have never seen, recalls in a flash entire epochs of our
dearest experience. I never smell daisies without living over again the
ecstatic mornings that my teacher and I spent wandering in the fields,
while I learned new words and the names of things. Smell is a potent
wizard that transports us across a thousand miles and all the years we
have lived. The odour of fruits wafts me to my Southern home, to my
childish frolics in the peach orchard. Other odours, instantaneous and
fleeting, cause my heart to dilate joyously or contract with remembered
grief. Even as I think of smells, my nose is full of scents that start
awake sweet memories of summers gone and ripening grain fields far away.
The faintest whiff from a meadow where the new-mown hay lies in the hot
sun displaces the here and the now. I am back again in the old red barn.
My little friends and I are playing in the haymow. A huge mow it is,
packed with crisp, sweet hay, from the top of which the smallest child
can reach the straining rafters. In their stalls beneath are the farm
animals. Here is Jerry, unresponsive, unbeautiful Jerry, crunching his
oats like a true pessimist, resolved to find his feed not good--at least
not so good as it ought to be. Again I touch Brownie, eager, grateful
little Brownie, ready to leave the juiciest fodder for a pat, straining
his beautiful, slender neck for a caress. Near by stands Lady Belle,
with sweet, moist mouth, lazily extracting the sealed-up cordial from
timothy and clover, and dreaming of deep June pastures and murmurous
streams.
The sense of smell has told me of a coming storm hours before there was
any sign of it visible. I notice first a throb of expectancy, a slight
quiver, a concentration in my nostrils. As the storm draws nearer, my
nostrils dilate the better to receive the flood of earth-odours which
seem to multiply and extend, until I feel the splash of rain against my
cheek. As the tempest departs, receding farther and farther, the odours
fade, become fainter and fainter, and die away beyond the bar of space.
I know by smell the kind of house we enter. I have recognized an
old-fashioned country house because it has several layers of odours,
left by a succession of families, of plants, perfumes, and draperies.
In the evening quiet there are fewer vibrations than in the daytime, and
then I rely more largely upon smell. The sulphuric scent of a match
tells me that the lamps are being lighted. Later I note the wavering
trail of odour that flits about and disappears. It is the curfew signal;
the lights are out for the night.
Out of doors I am aware by smell and touch of the ground we tread and
the places we pass. Sometimes, when there is no wind, the odours are so
grouped that I know the character of the country, and can place a
hayfield, a country store, a garden, a barn, a grove of pines, a
farmhouse with the windows open.
The other day I went to walk toward a familiar wood. Suddenly a
disturbing odour made me pause in dismay. Then followed a peculiar,
measured jar, followed by dull, heavy thunder. I understood the odour
and the jar only too well. The trees were being cut down. We climbed the
stone wall to the left. It borders the wood which I have loved so long
that it seems to be my peculiar possession. But to-day an unfamiliar
rush of air and an unwonted outburst of sun told me that my tree friends
were gone. The place was empty, like a deserted dwelling. I stretched
out my hand. Where once stood the steadfast pines, great, beautiful,
sweet, my hand touched raw, moist stumps. All about lay broken branches,
like the antlers of stricken deer. The fragrant, piled-up sawdust
swirled and tumbled about me. An unreasoning resentment flashed through
me at this ruthless destruction of the beauty that I love. But there is
no anger, no resentment in nature. The air is equally charged with the
odours of life and of destruction, for death equally with growth forever
ministers to all-conquering life. The sun shines as ever, and the winds
riot through the newly opened spaces. I know that a new forest will
spring where the old one stood, as beautiful, as beneficent.
Touch sensations are permanent and definite. Odours deviate and are
fugitive, changing in their shades, degrees, and location. There is
something else in odour which gives me a sense of distance. I should
call it horizon--the line where odour and fancy meet at the farthest
limit of scent.
Smell gives me more idea than touch or taste of the manner in which
sight and hearing probably discharge their functions. Touch seems to
reside in the object touched, because there is a contact of surfaces. In
smell there is no notion of relievo, and odour seems to reside not in
the object smelt, but in the organ. Since I smell a tree at a distance,
it is comprehensible to me that a person sees it without touching it. I
am not puzzled over the fact that he receives it as an image on his
retina without relievo, since my smell perceives the tree as a thin
sphere with no fullness or content. By themselves, odours suggest
nothing. I must learn by association to judge from them of distance, of
place, and of the actions or the surroundings which are the usual
occasions for them, just as I am told people judge from colour, light,
and sound.
From exhalations I learn much about people. I often know the work they
are engaged in. The odours of wood, iron, paint, and drugs cling to the
garments of those that work in them. Thus I can distinguish the
carpenter from the ironworker, the artist from the mason or the chemist.
When a person passes quickly from one place to another I get a scent
impression of where he has been--the kitchen, the garden, or the
sick-room. I gain pleasurable ideas of freshness and good taste from the
odours of soap, toilet water, clean garments, woollen and silk stuffs,
and gloves.
I have not, indeed, the all-knowing scent of the hound or the wild
animal. None but the halt and the blind need fear my skill in pursuit;
for there are other things besides water, stale trails, confusing cross
tracks to put me at fault. Nevertheless, human odours are as varied and
capable of recognition as hands and faces. The dear odours of those I
love are so definite, so unmistakable, that nothing can quite obliterate
them. If many years should elapse before I saw an intimate friend again,
I think I should recognize his odour instantly in the heart of Africa,
as promptly as would my brother that barks.
Once, long ago, in a crowded railway station, a lady kissed me as she
hurried by. I had not touched even her dress. But she left a scent with
her kiss which gave me a glimpse of her. The years are many since she
kissed me. Yet her odour is fresh in my memory.
It is difficult to put into words the thing itself, the elusive
person-odour. There seems to be no adequate vocabulary of smells, and I
must fall back on approximate phrase and metaphor.
Some people have a vague, unsubstantial odour that floats about, mocking
every effort to identify it. It is the will-o'-the-wisp of my olfactive
experience. Sometimes I meet one who lacks a distinctive person-scent,
and I seldom find such a one lively or entertaining. On the other hand,
one who has a pungent odour often possesses great vitality, energy, and
vigour of mind.
Masculine exhalations are as a rule stronger, more vivid, more widely
differentiated than those of women. In the odour of young men there is
something elemental, as of fire, storm, and salt sea. It pulsates with
buoyancy and desire. It suggests all things strong and beautiful and
joyous, and gives me a sense of physical happiness. I wonder if others
observe that all infants have the same scent--pure, simple,
undecipherable as their dormant personality. It is not until the age of
six or seven that they begin to have perceptible individual odours.
These develop and mature along with their mental and bodily powers.
What I have written about smell, especially person-smell, will perhaps
be regarded as the abnormal sentiment of one who can have no idea of the
"world of reality and beauty which the eye perceives." There are people
who are colour-blind, people who are tone-deaf. Most people are
smell-blind-and-deaf. We should not condemn a musical composition on the
testimony of an ear which cannot distinguish one chord from another, or
judge a picture by the verdict of a colour-blind critic. The sensations
of smell which cheer, inform, and broaden my life are not less pleasant
merely because some critic who treads the wide, bright pathway of the
eye has not cultivated his olfactive sense. Without the shy, fugitive,
often unobserved sensations and the certainties which taste, smell, and
touch give me, I should be obliged to take my conception of the universe
wholly from others. I should lack the alchemy by which I now infuse into
my world light, colour, and the Protean spark. The sensuous reality
which interthreads and supports all the gropings of my imagination would
be shattered. The solid earth would melt from under my feet and disperse
itself in space. The objects dear to my hands would become formless,
dead things, and I should walk among them as among invisible ghosts.
RELATIVE VALUES OF THE SENSES
VII
RELATIVE VALUES OF THE SENSES
I WAS once without the sense of smell and taste for several days. It
seemed incredible, this utter detachment from odours, to breathe the air
in and observe never a single scent. The feeling was probably similar,
though less in degree, to that of one who first loses sight and cannot
but expect to see the light again any day, any minute. I knew I should
smell again some time. Still, after the wonder had passed off, a
loneliness crept over me as vast as the air whose myriad odours I
missed. The multitudinous subtle delights that smell makes mine became
for a time wistful memories. When I recovered the lost sense, my heart
bounded with gladness. It is a fine dramatic touch that Hans Andersen
gives to the story of Kay and Gerda in the passage about flowers. Kay,
whom the wicked magician's glass has blinded to human love, rushes away
fiercely from home when he discovers that the roses have lost their
sweetness.
The loss of smell for a few days gave me a clearer idea than I had ever
had what it is to be blinded suddenly, helplessly. With a little stretch
of the imagination I knew then what it must be when the great curtain
shuts out suddenly the light of day, the stars, and the firmament
itself. I see the blind man's eyes strain for the light, as he fearfully
tries to walk his old rounds, until the unchanging blank that
everywhere spreads before him stamps the reality of the dark upon his
consciousness.
My temporary loss of smell proved to me, too, that the absence of a
sense need not dull the mental faculties and does not distort one's view
of the world, and so I reason that blindness and deafness need not
pervert the inner order of the intellect. I know that if there were no
odours for me I should still possess a considerable part of the world.
Novelties and surprises would abound, adventures would thicken in the
dark.
In my classification of the senses, smell is a little the ear's
inferior, and touch is a great deal the eye's superior. I find that
great artists and philosophers agree with me in this. Diderot says:
Je trouvais que de tous les sens, l'oeil était le
plus superficiel; l'oreille, le plus orgueilleux;
l'odorat, le plus voluptueux; le goût, le plus
superstitieux et le plus inconstant; le toucher,
le plus profond et le plus philosophe.[C]
A friend whom I have never seen sends me a quotation from Symonds's
"Renaissance in Italy":
Lorenzo Ghiberti, after describing a piece of
antique sculpture he saw in Rome adds, "To express
the perfection of learning, mastery, and art
displayed in it is beyond the power of language.
Its more exquisite beauties could not be
discovered by the sight, but only by the touch of
the hand passed over it." Of another classic
marble at Padua he says, "This statue, when the
Christian faith triumphed, was hidden in that
place by some gentle soul, who, seeing it so
perfect, fashioned with art so wonderful, and with
such power of genius, and being moved to reverent
pity, caused a sepulchre of bricks to be built,
and there within buried the statue, and covered it
with a broad slab of stone, that it might not in
any way be injured. It has very many sweet
beauties which the eyes alone can comprehend not,
either by strong or tempered light; only the hand
by touching them finds them out."
Hold out your hands to feel the luxury of the sunbeams. Press the soft
blossoms against your cheek, and finger their graces of form, their
delicate mutability of shape, their pliancy and freshness. Expose your
face to the aerial floods that sweep the heavens, "inhale great draughts
of space," wonder, wonder at the wind's unwearied activity. Pile note
on note the infinite music that flows increasingly to your soul from the
tactual sonorities of a thousand branches and tumbling waters. How can
the world be shrivelled when this most profound, emotional sense, touch,
is faithful to its service? I am sure that if a fairy bade me choose
between the sense of light and that of touch, I would not part with the
warm, endearing contact of human hands or the wealth of form, the
nobility and fullness that press into my palms.
FOOTNOTE:
[C] I found that of the senses, the eye is the most superficial, the ear
the most arrogant, smell the most voluptuous, taste the most
superstitious and fickle, touch the most profound and the most
philosophical.
THE FIVE-SENSED WORLD
VIII
THE FIVE-SENSED WORLD
THE poets have taught us how full of wonders is the night; and the night
of blindness has its wonders, too. The only lightless dark is the night
of ignorance and insensibility. We differ, blind and seeing, one from
another, not in our senses, but in the use we make of them, in the
imagination and courage with which we seek wisdom beyond our senses.
It is more difficult to teach ignorance to think than to teach an
intelligent blind man to see the grandeur of Niagara. I have walked with
people whose eyes are full of light, but who see nothing in wood, sea,
or sky, nothing in city streets, nothing in books. What a witless
masquerade is this seeing! It were better far to sail forever in the
night of blindness, with sense and feeling and mind, than to be thus
content with the mere act of seeing. They have the sunset, the morning
skies, the purple of distant hills, yet their souls voyage through this
enchanted world with a barren stare.
The calamity of the blind is immense, irreparable. But it does not take
away our share of the things that count--service, friendship, humour,
imagination, wisdom. It is the secret inner will that controls one's
fate. We are capable of willing to be good, of loving and being loved,
of thinking to the end that we may be wiser. We possess these
spirit-born forces equally with all God's children. Therefore we, too,
see the lightnings and hear the thunders of Sinai. We, too, march
through the wilderness and the solitary place that shall be glad for us,
and as we pass, God maketh the desert to blossom like the rose. We, too,
go in unto the Promised Land to possess the treasures of the spirit, the
unseen permanence of life and nature.
The blind man of spirit faces the unknown and grapples with it, and what
else does the world of seeing men do? He has imagination, sympathy,
humanity, and these ineradicable existences compel him to share by a
sort of proxy in a sense he has not. When he meets terms of colour,
light, physiognomy, he guesses, divines, puzzles out their meaning by
analogies drawn from the senses he has. I naturally tend to think,
reason, draw inferences as if I had five senses instead of three. This
tendency is beyond my control; it is involuntary, habitual, instinctive.
I cannot compel my mind to say "I feel" instead of "I see" or "I hear."
The word "feel" proves on examination to be no less a convention than
"see" and "hear" when I seek for words accurately to describe the
outward things that affect my three bodily senses. When a man loses a
leg, his brain persists in impelling him to use what he has not and yet
feels to be there. Can it be that the brain is so constituted that it
will continue the activity which animates the sight and the hearing,
after the eye and the ear have been destroyed?
It might seem that the five senses would work intelligently together
only when resident in the same body. Yet when two or three are left
unaided, they reach out for their complements in another body, and find
that they yoke easily with the borrowed team. When my hand aches from
overtouching, I find relief in the sight of another. When my mind lags,
wearied with the strain of forcing out thoughts about dark, musicless,
colourless, detached substance, it recovers its elasticity as soon as I
resort to the powers of another mind which commands light, harmony,
colour. Now, if the five senses will not remain disassociated, the life
of the deaf-blind cannot be severed from the life of the seeing, hearing
race.
The deaf-blind person may be plunged and replunged like Schiller's
diver into seas of the unknown. But, unlike the doomed hero, he returns
triumphant, grasping the priceless truth that his mind is not crippled,
not limited to the infirmity of his senses. The world of the eye and the
ear becomes to him a subject of fateful interest. He seizes every word
of sight and hearing because his sensations compel it. Light and colour,
of which he has no tactual evidence, he studies fearlessly, believing
that all humanly knowable truth is open to him. He is in a position
similar to that of the astronomer who, firm, patient, watches a star
night after night for many years and feels rewarded if he discovers a
single fact about it. The man deaf-blind to ordinary outward things, and
the man deaf-blind to the immeasurable universe, are both limited by
time and space; but they have made a compact to wring service from their
limitations.
The bulk of the world's knowledge is an imaginary construction. History
is but a mode of imagining, of making us see civilizations that no
longer appear upon the earth. Some of the most significant discoveries
in modern science owe their origin to the imagination of men who had
neither accurate knowledge nor exact instruments to demonstrate their
beliefs. If astronomy had not kept always in advance of the telescope,
no one would ever have thought a telescope worth making. What great
invention has not existed in the inventor's mind long before he gave it
tangible shape?
A more splendid example of imaginative knowledge is the unity with which
philosophers start their study of the world. They can never perceive the
world in its entire reality. Yet their imagination, with its magnificent
allowance for error, its power of treating uncertainty as negligible,
has pointed the way for empirical knowledge.
In their highest creative moments the great poet, the great musician
cease to use the crude instruments of sight and hearing. They break away
from their sense-moorings, rise on strong, compelling wings of spirit
far above our misty hills and darkened valleys into the region of light,
music, intellect.
What eye hath seen the glories of the New Jerusalem? What ear hath heard
the music of the spheres, the steps of time, the strokes of chance, the
blows of death? Men have not heard with their physical sense the tumult
of sweet voices above the hills of Judea nor seen the heavenly vision;
but millions have listened to that spiritual message through many ages.
Our blindness changes not a whit the course of inner realities. Of us it
is as true as it is of the seeing that the most beautiful world is
always entered through the imagination. If you wish to be something that
you are not,--something fine, noble, good,--you shut your eyes, and for
one dreamy moment you are that which you long to be.
INWARD VISIONS
IX
INWARD VISIONS
ACCORDING to all art, all nature, all coherent human thought, we know
that order, proportion, form, are essential elements of beauty. Now
order, proportion, and form, are palpable to the touch. But beauty and
rhythm are deeper than sense. They are like love and faith. They spring
out of a spiritual process only slightly dependent upon sensations.
Order, proportion, form, cannot generate in the mind the abstract idea
of beauty, unless there is already a soul intelligence to breathe life
into the elements. Many persons, having perfect eyes, are blind in
their perceptions. Many persons, having perfect ears, are emotionally
deaf. Yet these are the very ones who dare to set limits to the vision
of those who, lacking a sense or two, have will, soul, passion,
imagination. Faith is a mockery if it teaches us not that we may
construct a world unspeakably more complete and beautiful than the
material world. And I, too, may construct my better world, for I am a
child of God, an inheritor of a fragment of the Mind that created all
worlds.
There is a consonance of all things, a blending of all that we know
about the material world and the spiritual. It consists for me of all
the impressions, vibrations, heat, cold, taste, smell, and the
sensations which these convey to the mind, infinitely combined,
interwoven with associated ideas and acquired knowledge. No thoughtful
person will believe that what I said about the meaning of footsteps is
strictly true of mere jolts and jars. It is an array of the spiritual in
certain natural elements, tactual beats, and an acquired knowledge of
physical habits and moral traits of highly organized human beings. What
would odours signify if they were not associated with the time of the
year, the place I live in, and the people I know?
The result of such a blending is sometimes a discordant trying of
strings far removed from a melody, very far from a symphony. (For the
benefit of those who must be reassured, I will say that I have felt a
musician tuning his violin, that I have read about a symphony, and so
have a fair intellectual perception of my metaphor.) But with training
and experience the faculties gather up the stray notes and combine them
into a full, harmonious whole. If the person who accomplishes this task
is peculiarly gifted, we call him a poet. The blind and the deaf are not
great poets, it is true. Yet now and again you find one deaf and blind
who has attained to his royal kingdom of beauty.
I have a little volume of poems by a deaf-blind lady, Madame Bertha
Galeron. Her poetry has versatility of thought. Now it is tender and
sweet, now full of tragic passion and the sternness of destiny. Victor
Hugo called her "La Grande Voyante." She has written several plays, two
of which have been acted in Paris. The French Academy has crowned her
work.
The infinite wonders of the universe are revealed to us in exact measure
as we are capable of receiving them. The keenness of our vision depends
not on how much we can see, but on how much we feel. Nor yet does mere
knowledge create beauty. Nature sings her most exquisite songs to those
who love her. She does not unfold her secrets to those who come only to
gratify their desire of analysis, to gather facts, but to those who see
in her manifold phenomena suggestions of lofty, delicate sentiments.
[Illustration: Copyright, 1907, by The Whitman Studio
The Little Boy Next Door
To face page 120]
Am I to be denied the use of such adjectives as "freshness" and
"sparkle," "dark" and "gloomy"? I have walked in the fields at early
morning. I have felt a rose-bush laden with dew and fragrance. I have
felt the curves and graces of my kitten at play. I have known the
sweet, shy ways of little children. I have known the sad opposites of
all these, a ghastly touch picture. Remember, I have sometimes travelled
over a dusty road as far as my feet could go. At a sudden turn I have
stepped upon starved, ignoble weeds, and reaching out my hands, I have
touched a fair tree out of which a parasite had taken the life like a
vampire. I have touched a pretty bird whose soft wings hung limp, whose
little heart beat no more. I have wept over the feebleness and deformity
of a child, lame, or born blind, or, worse still, mindless. If I had the
genius of Thomson, I, too, could depict a "City of Dreadful Night" from
mere touch sensations. From contrasts so irreconcilable can we fail to
form an idea of beauty and know surely when we meet with loveliness?
Here is a sonnet eloquent of a blind man's power of vision:
THE MOUNTAIN TO THE PINE