When you describe to a blind man what strikes you on the
very instant, you really give him the illusion of light. He
sees through your eyes. There is in his soul both light and
color. The green swell of the forest, the yellow waves of the
harvests, that stream that unrolls yonder, across the fields,
like a ribbon of silver; that river whose waters are transmuted
into liquid gold in the brazier of the setting sun, all this
shines before his inward eye. And yet it is not this that most
delights the blind man. What moves him, transports him, not
only if he is your father, your son, your friend, but even a
simple traveling companion, is that he sees through you; that,
for an hour, you realize the holy law that man owes himself to
man, and that he lives, above all, by your bounty and fraternal
exchange.--CHARLES WAGNER, “The Gospel of Life.”
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