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Title: The World I Live In
Author: Helen Keller
Release Date: January 1, 2009 [eBook #27683]
Language: English
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THE WORLD I LIVE IN
* * * * *
HELEN KELLER
"The autobiography of Helen Keller is
unquestionably one of the most remarkable records
ever published."--_British Weekly._
"This book is a human document of intense
interest, and without a parallel, we suppose, in
the history of literature."--_Yorkshire Post._
"Miss Keller's autobiography, well written and
full of practical interest in all sides of life,
literary, artistic and social, records an
extraordinary victory over physical
disabilities."--_Times._
"This book is a record of the miraculous. No one
can read it without being profoundly touched by
the patience and devotion which brought the blind,
deaf-mute child into touch with human life,
without being filled with wonder at the quick
intelligence which made such communication with
the outside world possible."--_Queen._
_Illustrated, price 7s. 6d._
POPULAR EDITION, _net, 1s._
The Story of My Life
By HELEN KELLER
* * * * *
The Practice of Optimism
_Cloth, net, 1s. 6d.; paper, net, 1s._
* * * * *
LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON, E.C.
* * * * *
[Illustration: Copyright, 1907, by The Whitman Studio
Helen Keller in Her Study]
THE WORLD I LIVE IN
by
HELEN KELLER
Author of "The Story of My Life," Etc.
Illustrated
Hodder and Stoughton
London New York Toronto
Copyright 1904, 1908, by The Century Co.
TO
HENRY H. ROGERS
MY DEAR FRIEND OF
MANY YEARS
PREFACE
The essays and the poem in this book appeared originally in the "Century
Magazine," the essays under the titles "A Chat About the Hand," "Sense
and Sensibility," and "My Dreams." Mr. Gilder suggested the articles,
and I thank him for his kind interest and encouragement. But he must
also accept the responsibility which goes with my gratitude. For it is
owing to his wish and that of other editors that I talk so much about
myself.
Every book is in a sense autobiographical. But while other
self-recording creatures are permitted at least to seem to change the
subject, apparently nobody cares what I think of the tariff, the
conservation of our natural resources, or the conflicts which revolve
about the name of Dreyfus. If I offer to reform the education system of
the world, my editorial friends say, "That is interesting. But will you
please tell us what idea you had of goodness and beauty when you were
six years old?" First they ask me to tell the life of the child who is
mother to the woman. Then they make me my own daughter and ask for an
account of grown-up sensations. Finally I am requested to write about my
dreams, and thus I become an anachronical grandmother; for it is the
special privilege of old age to relate dreams. The editors are so kind
that they are no doubt right in thinking that nothing I have to say
about the affairs of the universe would be interesting. But until they
give me opportunity to write about matters that are not-me, the world
must go on uninstructed and unreformed, and I can only do my best with
the one small subject upon which I am allowed to discourse.
In "The Chant of Darkness" I did not intend to set up as a poet. I
thought I was writing prose, except for the magnificent passage from Job
which I was paraphrasing. But this part seemed to my friends to separate
itself from the exposition, and I made it into a kind of poem.
H. K.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
THE SEEING HAND 3
CHAPTER II
THE HANDS OF OTHERS 19
CHAPTER III
THE HAND OF THE RACE 33
CHAPTER IV
THE POWER OF TOUCH 45
CHAPTER V
THE FINER VIBRATIONS 63
CHAPTER VI
SMELL, THE FALLEN ANGEL 77
CHAPTER VII
RELATIVE VALUES OF THE SENSES 95
CHAPTER VIII
THE FIVE-SENSED WORLD 103
CHAPTER IX
INWARD VISIONS 115
CHAPTER X
ANALOGIES IN SENSE PERCEPTION 129
CHAPTER X
BEFORE THE SOUL DAWN 141
CHAPTER XII
THE LARGER SANCTIONS 153
CHAPTER XIII
THE DREAM WORLD 169
CHAPTER XIV
DREAMS AND REALITY 195
CHAPTER XV
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
Thou tall, majestic monarch of the wood,
That standest where no wild vines dare to creep,
Men call thee old, and say that thou hast stood
A century upon my rugged steep;
Yet unto me thy life is but a day,
When I recall the things that I have seen,--
The forest monarchs that have passed away
Upon the spot where first I saw thy green;
For I am older than the age of man,
Or all the living things that crawl or creep,
Or birds of air, or creatures of the deep;
I was the first dim outline of God's plan:
Only the waters of the restless sea
And the infinite stars in heaven are old to me.
I am glad my friend Mr. Stedman knew that poem while he was making his
Anthology, for knowing it, so fine a poet and critic could not fail to
give it a place in his treasure-house of American poetry. The poet, Mr.
Clarence Hawkes, has been blind since childhood; yet he finds in nature
hints of combinations for his mental pictures. Out of the knowledge and
impressions that come to him he constructs a masterpiece which hangs
upon the walls of his thought. And into the poet's house come all the
true spirits of the world.
It was a rare poet who thought of the mountain as "the first dim outline
of God's plan." That is the real wonder of the poem, and not that a
blind man should speak so confidently of sky and sea. Our ideas of the
sky are an accumulation of touch-glimpses, literary allusions, and the
observations of others, with an emotional blending of all. My face feels
only a tiny portion of the atmosphere; but I go through continuous space
and feel the air at every point, every instant. I have been told about
the distances from our earth to the sun, to the other planets, and to
the fixed stars. I multiply a thousand times the utmost height and width
that my touch compasses, and thus I gain a deep sense of the sky's
immensity.
Move me along constantly over water, water, nothing but water, and you
give me the solitude, the vastness of ocean which fills the eye. I have
been in a little sail-boat on the sea, when the rising tide swept it
toward the shore. May I not understand the poet's figure: "The green of
spring overflows the earth like a tide"? I have felt the flame of a
candle blow and flutter in the breeze. May I not, then, say: "Myriads of
fireflies flit hither and thither in the dew-wet grass like little
fluttering tapers"?
Combine the endless space of air, the sun's warmth, the clouds that are
described to my understanding spirit, the frequent breaking through the
soil of a brook or the expanse of the wind-ruffled lake, the tactual
undulation of the hills, which I recall when I am far away from them,
the towering trees upon trees as I walk by them, the bearings that I try
to keep while others tell me the directions of the various points of the
scenery, and you will begin to feel surer of my mental landscape. The
utmost bound to which my thought will go with clearness is the horizon
of my mind. From this horizon I imagine the one which the eye marks.
Touch cannot bridge distance,--it is fit only for the contact of
surfaces,--but thought leaps the chasm. For this reason I am able to use
words descriptive of objects distant from my senses. I have felt the
rondure of the infant's tender form. I can apply this perception to the
landscape and to the far-off hills.
ANALOGIES IN SENSE PERCEPTION
X
ANALOGIES IN SENSE PERCEPTION
I HAVE not touched the outline of a star nor the glory of the moon, but
I believe that God has set two lights in mind, the greater to rule by
day and the lesser by night, and by them I know that I am able to
navigate my life-bark, as certain of reaching the haven as he who steers
by the North Star. Perhaps my sun shines not as yours. The colours that
glorify my world, the blue of the sky, the green of the fields, may not
correspond exactly with those you delight in; but they are none the less
colour to me. The sun does not shine for my physical eyes, nor does the
lightning flash, nor do the trees turn green in the spring; but they
have not therefore ceased to exist, any more than the landscape is
annihilated when you turn your back on it.
I understand how scarlet can differ from crimson because I know that the
smell of an orange is not the smell of a grape-fruit. I can also
conceive that colours have shades, and guess what shades are. In smell
and taste there are varieties not broad enough to be fundamental; so I
call them shades. There are half a dozen roses near me. They all have
the unmistakable rose scent; yet my nose tells me that they are not the
same. The American Beauty is distinct from the Jacqueminot and La
France. Odours in certain grasses fade as really to my sense as certain
colours do to yours in the sun. The freshness of a flower in my hand is
analogous to the freshness I taste in an apple newly picked. I make use
of analogies like these to enlarge my conceptions of colours. Some
analogies which I draw between qualities in surface and vibration, taste
and smell, are drawn by others between sight, hearing, and touch. This
fact encourages me to persevere, to try and bridge the gap between the
eye and the hand.
Certainly I get far enough to sympathize with the delight that my kind
feel in beauty they see and harmony they hear. This bond between
humanity and me is worth keeping, even if the idea on which I base it
prove erroneous.
Sweet, beautiful vibrations exist for my touch, even though they travel
through other substances than air to reach me. So I imagine sweet,
delightful sounds, and the artistic arrangement of them which is called
music, and I remember that they travel through the air to the ear,
conveying impressions somewhat like mine. I also know what tones are,
since they are perceptible tactually in a voice. Now, heat varies
greatly in the sun, in the fire, in hands, and in the fur of animals;
indeed, there is such a thing for me as a cold sun. So I think of the
varieties of light that touch the eye, cold and warm, vivid and dim,
soft and glaring, but always light, and I imagine their passage through
the air to an extensive sense, instead of to a narrow one like touch.
From the experience I have had with voices I guess how the eye
distinguishes shades in the midst of light. While I read the lips of a
woman whose voice is soprano, I note a low tone or a glad tone in the
midst of a high, flowing voice. When I feel my cheeks hot, I know that I
am red. I have talked so much and read so much about colours that
through no will of my own I attach meanings to them, just as all people
attach certain meanings to abstract terms like hope, idealism,
monotheism, intellect, which cannot be represented truly by visible
objects, but which are understood from analogies between immaterial
concepts and the ideas they awaken of external things. The force of
association drives me to say that white is exalted and pure, green is
exuberant, red suggests love or shame or strength. Without the colour or
its equivalent, life to me would be dark, barren, a vast blackness.
Thus through an inner law of completeness my thoughts are not permitted
to remain colourless. It strains my mind to separate colour and sound
from objects. Since my education began I have always had things
described to me with their colours and sounds by one with keen senses
and a fine feeling for the significant. Therefore I habitually think of
things as coloured and resonant. Habit accounts for part. The soul sense
accounts for another part. The brain with its five-sensed construction
asserts its right and accounts for the rest. Inclusive of all, the unity
of the world demands that colour be kept in it, whether I have
cognizance of it or not. Rather than be shut out, I take part in it by
discussing it, imagining it, happy in the happiness of those near me
who gaze at the lovely hues of the sunset or the rainbow.
My hand has its share in this multiple knowledge, but it must never be
forgotten that with the fingers I see only a very small portion of a
surface, and that I must pass my hand continually over it before my
touch grasps the whole. It is still more important, however, to remember
that my imagination is not tethered to certain points, locations, and
distances. It puts all the parts together simultaneously as if it saw or
knew instead of feeling them. Though I feel only a small part of my
horse at a time,--my horse is nervous and does not submit to manual
explorations,--yet, because I have many times felt hock, nose, hoof and
mane, I can see the steeds of Phoebus Apollo coursing the heavens.
With such a power active it is impossible that my thought should be
vague, indistinct. It must needs be potent, definite. This is really a
corollary of the philosophical truth that the real world exists only for
the mind. That is to say, I can never touch the world in its entirety;
indeed, I touch less of it than the portion that others see or hear. But
all creatures, all objects, pass into my brain entire, and occupy the
same extent there that they do in material space. I declare that for me
branched thoughts, instead of pines, wave, sway, rustle, make musical
the ridges of mountains rising summit upon summit. Mention a rose too
far away for me to smell it. Straightway a scent steals into my
nostril, a form presses against my palm in all its dilating softness,
with rounded petals, slightly curled edges, curving stem, leaves
drooping. When I would fain view the world as a whole, it rushes into
vision--man, beast, bird, reptile, fly, sky, ocean, mountains, plain,
rock, pebble. The warmth of life, the reality of creation is over
all--the throb of human hands, glossiness of fur, lithe windings of long
bodies, poignant buzzing of insects, the ruggedness of the steeps as I
climb them, the liquid mobility and boom of waves upon the rocks.
Strange to say, try as I may, I cannot force my touch to pervade this
universe in all directions. The moment I try, the whole vanishes; only
small objects or narrow portions of a surface, mere touch-signs, a chaos
of things scattered at random, remain. No thrill, no delight is excited
thereby. Restore to the artistic, comprehensive internal sense its
rightful domain, and you give me joy which best proves the reality.
BEFORE THE SOUL DAWN
XI
BEFORE THE SOUL DAWN
BEFORE my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a
world that was a no-world. I cannot hope to describe adequately that
unconscious, yet conscious time of nothingness. I did not know that I
knew aught, or that I lived or acted or desired. I had neither will nor
intellect. I was carried along to objects and acts by a certain blind
natural impetus. I had a mind which caused me to feel anger,
satisfaction, desire. These two facts led those about me to suppose
that I willed and thought. I can remember all this, not because I knew
that it was so, but because I have tactual memory. It enables me to
remember that I never contracted my forehead in the act of thinking. I
never viewed anything beforehand or chose it. I also recall tactually
the fact that never in a start of the body or a heart-beat did I feel
that I loved or cared for anything. My inner life, then, was a blank
without past, present, or future, without hope or anticipation, without
wonder or joy or faith.
It was not night--it was not day.
. . . . .
But vacancy absorbing space,
And fixedness, without a place;
There were no stars--no earth--no time--
No check--no change--no good--no crime.
My dormant being had no idea of God or immortality, no fear of death.
I remember, also through touch, that I had a power of association. I
felt tactual jars like the stamp of a foot, the opening of a window or
its closing, the slam of a door. After repeatedly smelling rain and
feeling the discomfort of wetness, I acted like those about me: I ran to
shut the window. But that was not thought in any sense. It was the same
kind of association that makes animals take shelter from the rain. From
the same instinct of aping others, I folded the clothes that came from
the laundry, and put mine away, fed the turkeys, sewed bead-eyes on my
doll's face, and did many other things of which I have the tactual
remembrance. When I wanted anything I liked,--ice-cream, for instance,
of which I was very fond,--I had a delicious taste on my tongue (which,
by the way, I never have now), and in my hand I felt the turning of the
freezer. I made the sign, and my mother knew I wanted ice-cream. I
"thought" and desired in my fingers. If I had made a man, I should
certainly have put the brain and soul in his finger-tips. From
reminiscences like these I conclude that it is the opening of the two
faculties, freedom of will, or choice, and rationality, or the power of
thinking from one thing to another, which makes it possible to come into
being first as a child, afterwards as a man.
Since I had no power of thought, I did not compare one mental state with
another. So I was not conscious of any change or process going on in my
brain when my teacher began to instruct me. I merely felt keen delight
in obtaining more easily what I wanted by means of the finger motions
she taught me. I thought only of objects, and only objects I wanted. It
was the turning of the freezer on a larger scale. When I learned the
meaning of "I" and "me" and found that I was something, I began to
think. Then consciousness first existed for me. Thus it was not the
sense of touch that brought me knowledge. It was the awakening of my
soul that first rendered my senses their value, their cognizance of
objects, names, qualities, and properties. Thought made me conscious of
love, joy, and all the emotions. I was eager to know, then to
understand, afterward to reflect on what I knew and understood, and the
blind impetus, which had before driven me hither and thither at the
dictates of my sensations, vanished forever.
I cannot represent more clearly than any one else the gradual and subtle
changes from first impressions to abstract ideas. But I know that my
physical ideas, that is, ideas derived from material objects, appear to
me first an idea similar to those of touch. Instantly they pass into
intellectual meanings. Afterward the meaning finds expression in what is
called "inner speech." When I was a child, my inner speech was inner
spelling. Although I am even now frequently caught spelling to myself on
my fingers, yet I talk to myself, too, with my lips, and it is true that
when I first learned to speak, my mind discarded the finger-symbols and
began to articulate. However, when I try to recall what some one has
said to me, I am conscious of a hand spelling into mine.
It has often been asked what were my earliest impressions of the world
in which I found myself. But one who thinks at all of his first
impressions knows what a riddle this is. Our impressions grow and change
unnoticed, so that what we suppose we thought as children may be quite
different from what we actually experienced in our childhood. I only
know that after my education began the world which came within my reach
was all alive. I spelled to my blocks and my dogs. I sympathized with
plants when the flowers were picked, because I thought it hurt them,
and that they grieved for their lost blossoms. It was two years before I
could be made to believe that my dogs did not understand what I said,
and I always apologized to them when I ran into or stepped on them.
As my experiences broadened and deepened, the indeterminate, poetic
feelings of childhood began to fix themselves in definite thoughts.
Nature--the world I could touch--was folded and filled with myself. I am
inclined to believe those philosophers who declare that we know nothing
but our own feelings and ideas. With a little ingenious reasoning one
may see in the material world simply a mirror, an image of permanent
mental sensations. In either sphere self-knowledge is the condition and
the limit of our consciousness. That is why, perhaps, many people know
so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They
look within themselves--and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that
there is nothing outside themselves, either.
However that may be, I came later to look for an image of my emotions
and sensations in others. I had to learn the outward signs of inward
feelings. The start of fear, the suppressed, controlled tensity of pain,
the beat of happy muscles in others, had to be perceived and compared
with my own experiences before I could trace them back to the intangible
soul of another. Groping, uncertain, I at last found my identity, and
after seeing my thoughts and feelings repeated in others, I gradually
constructed my world of men and of God. As I read and study, I find
that this is what the rest of the race has done. Man looks within
himself and in time finds the measure and the meaning of the universe.
THE LARGER SANCTIONS
XII
THE LARGER SANCTIONS
SO, in the midst of life, eager, imperious life, the deaf-blind child,
fettered to the bare rock of circumstance, spider-like, sends out
gossamer threads of thought into the measureless void that surrounds
him. Patiently he explores the dark, until he builds up a knowledge of
the world he lives in, and his soul meets the beauty of the world, where
the sun shines always, and the birds sing. To the blind child the dark
is kindly. In it he finds nothing extraordinary or terrible. It is his
familiar world; even the groping from place to place, the halting
steps, the dependence upon others, do not seem strange to him. He does
not know how many countless pleasures the dark shuts out from him. Not
until he weighs his life in the scale of others' experience does he
realize what it is to live forever in the dark. But the knowledge that
teaches him this bitterness also brings its consolation--spiritual
light, the promise of the day that shall be.
The blind child--the deaf-blind child--has inherited the mind of seeing
and hearing ancestors--a mind measured to five senses. Therefore he must
be influenced, even if it be unknown to himself, by the light, colour,
song which have been transmitted through the language he is taught, for
the chambers of the mind are ready to receive that language. The brain
of the race is so permeated with colour that it dyes even the speech of
the blind. Every object I think of is stained with the hue that belongs
to it by association and memory. The experience of the deaf-blind
person, in a world of seeing, hearing people, is like that of a sailor
on an island where the inhabitants speak a language unknown to him,
whose life is unlike that he has lived. He is one, they are many; there
is no chance of compromise. He must learn to see with their eyes, to
hear with their ears, to think their thoughts, to follow their ideals.
If the dark, silent world which surrounds him were essentially different
from the sunlit, resonant world, it would be incomprehensible to his
kind, and could never be discussed. If his feelings and sensations were
fundamentally different from those of others, they would be
inconceivable except to those who had similar sensations and feelings.
If the mental consciousness of the deaf-blind person were absolutely
dissimilar to that of his fellows, he would have no means of imagining
what they think. Since the mind of the sightless is essentially the same
as that of the seeing in that it admits of no lack, it must supply some
sort of equivalent for missing physical sensations. It must perceive a
likeness between things outward and things inward, a correspondence
between the seen and the unseen. I make use of such a correspondence in
many relations, and no matter how far I pursue it to things I cannot
see, it does not break under the test.
As a working hypothesis, correspondence is adequate to all life, through
the whole range of phenomena. The flash of thought and its swiftness
explain the lightning flash and the sweep of a comet through the
heavens. My mental sky opens to me the vast celestial spaces, and I
proceed to fill them with the images of my spiritual stars. I recognize
truth by the clearness and guidance that it gives my thought, and,
knowing what that clearness is, I can imagine what light is to the eye.
It is not a convention of language, but a forcible feeling of the
reality, that at times makes me start when I say, "Oh, I see my
mistake!" or "How dark, cheerless is his life!" I know these are
metaphors. Still, I must prove with them, since there is nothing in our
language to replace them. Deaf-blind metaphors to correspond do not
exist and are not necessary. Because I can understand the word "reflect"
figuratively, a mirror has never perplexed me. The manner in which my
imagination perceives absent things enables me to see how glasses can
magnify things, bring them nearer, or remove them farther.
Deny me this correspondence, this internal sense, confine me to the
fragmentary, incoherent touch-world, and lo, I become as a bat which
wanders about on the wing. Suppose I omitted all words of seeing,
hearing, colour, light, landscape, the thousand phenomena, instruments
and beauties connected with them. I should suffer a great diminution of
the wonder and delight in attaining knowledge; also--more dreadful
loss--my emotions would be blunted, so that I could not be touched by
things unseen.
Has anything arisen to disprove the adequacy of correspondence? Has any
chamber of the blind man's brain been opened and found empty? Has any
psychologist explored the mind of the sightless and been able to say,
"There is no sensation here"?
I tread the solid earth; I breathe the scented air. Out of these two
experiences I form numberless associations and correspondences. I
observe, I feel, I think, I imagine. I associate the countless varied
impressions, experiences, concepts. Out of these materials Fancy, the
cunning artisan of the brain, welds an image which the sceptic would
deny me, because I cannot see with my physical eyes the changeful,
lovely face of my thought-child. He would break the mind's mirror. This
spirit-vandal would humble my soul and force me to bite the dust of
material things. While I champ the bit of circumstance, he scourges and
goads me with the spur of fact. If I heeded him, the sweet-visaged earth
would vanish into nothing, and I should hold in my hand nought but an
aimless, soulless lump of dead matter. But although the body physical is
rooted alive to the Promethean rock, the spirit-proud huntress of the
air will still pursue the shining, open highways of the universe.
Blindness has no limiting effect upon mental vision. My intellectual
horizon is infinitely wide. The universe it encircles is immeasurable.
Would they who bid me keep within the narrow bound of my meagre senses
demand of Herschel that he roof his stellar universe and give us back
Plato's solid firmament of glassy spheres? Would they command Darwin
from the grave and bid him blot out his geological time, give us back a
paltry few thousand years? Oh, the supercilious doubters! They ever
strive to clip the upward daring wings of the spirit.
A person deprived of one or more senses is not, as many seem to think,
turned out into a trackless wilderness without landmark or guide. The
blind man carries with him into his dark environment all the faculties
essential to the apprehension of the visible world whose door is closed
behind him. He finds his surroundings everywhere homogeneous with those
of the sunlit world; for there is an inexhaustible ocean of likenesses
between the world within, and the world without, and these likenesses,
these correspondences, he finds equal to every exigency his life offers.
The necessity of some such thing as correspondence or symbolism appears
more and more urgent as we consider the duties that religion and
philosophy enjoin upon us.
The blind are expected to read the Bible as a means of attaining
spiritual happiness. Now, the Bible is filled throughout with references
to clouds, stars, colours, and beauty, and often the mention of these is
essential to the meaning of the parable or the message in which they
occur. Here one must needs see the inconsistency of people who believe
in the Bible, and yet deny us a right to talk about what we do not see,
and for that matter what _they_ do not see, either. Who shall forbid my
heart to sing: "Yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. He made
darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him were dark waters
and thick clouds of the skies"?
Philosophy constantly points out the untrustworthiness of the five
senses and the important work of reason which corrects the errors of
sight and reveals its illusions. If we cannot depend on five senses, how
much less may we rely on three! What ground have we for discarding
light, sound, and colour as an integral part of our world? How are we to
know that they have ceased to exist for us? We must take their reality
for granted, even as the philosopher assumes the reality of the world
without being able to see it physically as a whole.
Ancient philosophy offers an argument which seems still valid. There is
in the blind as in the seeing an Absolute which gives truth to what we
know to be true, order to what is orderly, beauty to the beautiful,
touchableness to what is tangible. If this is granted, it follows that
this Absolute is not imperfect, incomplete, partial. It must needs go
beyond the limited evidence of our sensations, and also give light to
what is invisible, music to the musical that silence dulls. Thus mind
itself compels us to acknowledge that we are in a world of intellectual
order, beauty, and harmony. The essences, or absolutes of these ideas,
necessarily dispel their opposites which belong with evil, disorder and
discord. Thus deafness and blindness do not exist in the immaterial
mind, which is philosophically the real world, but are banished with the
perishable material senses. Reality, of which visible things are the
symbol, shines before my mind. While I walk about my chamber with
unsteady steps, my spirit sweeps skyward on eagle wings and looks out
with unquenchable vision upon the world of eternal beauty.
THE DREAM WORLD
XIII
THE DREAM WORLD
EVERYBODY takes his own dreams seriously, but yawns at the
breakfast-table when somebody else begins to tell the adventures of the
night before. I hesitate, therefore, to enter upon an account of my
dreams; for it is a literary sin to bore the reader, and a scientific
sin to report the facts of a far country with more regard to point and
brevity than to complete and literal truth. The psychologists have
trained a pack of theories and facts which they keep in leash, like so
many bulldogs, and which they let loose upon us whenever we depart from
the straight and narrow path of dream probability. One may not even tell
an entertaining dream without being suspected of having liberally edited
it,--as if editing were one of the seven deadly sins, instead of a
useful and honourable occupation! Be it understood, then, that I am
discoursing at my own breakfast-table, and that no scientific man is
present to trip the autocrat.
I used to wonder why scientific men and others were always asking me
about my dreams. But I am not surprised now, since I have discovered
what some of them believe to be the ordinary waking experience of one
who is both deaf and blind. They think that I can know very little about
objects even a few feet beyond the reach of my arms. Everything outside
of myself, according to them, is a hazy blur. Trees, mountains, cities,
the ocean, even the house I live in are but fairy fabrications, misty
unrealities. Therefore it is assumed that my dreams should have peculiar
interest for the man of science. In some undefined way it is expected
that they should reveal the world I dwell in to be flat, formless,
colourless, without perspective, with little thickness and less
solidity--a vast solitude of soundless space. But who shall put into
words limitless, visionless, silent void? One should be a disembodied
spirit indeed to make anything out of such insubstantial experiences. A
world, or a dream for that matter, to be comprehensible to us, must, I
should think, have a warp of substance woven into the woof of fantasy.
We cannot imagine even in dreams an object which has no counterpart in
reality. Ghosts always resemble somebody, and if they do not appear
themselves, their presence is indicated by circumstances with which we
are perfectly familiar.
During sleep we enter a strange, mysterious realm which science has thus
far not explored. Beyond the border-line of slumber the investigator may
not pass with his common-sense rule and test. Sleep with softest touch
locks all the gates of our physical senses and lulls to rest the
conscious will--the disciplinarian of our waking thoughts. Then the
spirit wrenches itself free from the sinewy arms of reason and like a
winged courser spurns the firm green earth and speeds away upon wind
and cloud, leaving neither trace nor footprint by which science may
track its flight and bring us knowledge of the distant, shadowy country
that we nightly visit. When we come back from the dream-realm, we can
give no reasonable report of what we met there. But once across the
border, we feel at home as if we had always lived there and had never
made any excursions into this rational daylight world.
My dreams do not seem to differ very much from the dreams of other
people. Some of them are coherent and safely hitched to an event or a
conclusion. Others are inconsequent and fantastic. All attest that in
Dreamland there is no such thing as repose. We are always up and doing
with a mind for any adventure. We act, strive, think, suffer and are
glad to no purpose. We leave outside the portals of Sleep all
troublesome incredulities and vexatious speculations as to probability.
I float wraith-like upon clouds in and out among the winds, without the
faintest notion that I am doing anything unusual. In Dreamland I find
little that is altogether strange or wholly new to my experience. No
matter what happens, I am not astonished, however extraordinary the
circumstances may be. I visit a foreign land where I have not been in
reality, and I converse with peoples whose language I have never heard.
Yet we manage to understand each other perfectly. Into whatsoever
situation or society my wanderings bring me, there is the same
homogeneity. If I happen into Vagabondia, I make merry with the jolly
folk of the road or the tavern.
I do not remember ever to have met persons with whom I could not at once
communicate, or to have been shocked or surprised at the doings of my
dream-companions. In its strange wanderings in those dusky groves of
Slumberland my soul takes everything for granted and adapts itself to
the wildest phantoms. I am seldom confused. Everything is as clear as
day. I know events the instant they take place, and wherever I turn my
steps, Mind is my faithful guide and interpreter.
I suppose every one has had in a dream the exasperating, profitless
experience of seeking something urgently desired at the moment, and the
aching, weary sensation that follows each failure to track the thing to
its hiding-place. Sometimes with a singing dizziness in my head I climb
and climb, I know not where or why. Yet I cannot quit the torturing,
passionate endeavour, though again and again I reach out blindly for an
object to hold to. Of course according to the perversity of dreams there
is no object near. I clutch empty air, and then I fall downward, and
still downward, and in the midst of the fall I dissolve into the
atmosphere upon which I have been floating so precariously.
Some of my dreams seem to be traced one within another like a series of
concentric circles. In sleep I think I cannot sleep. I toss about in the
toils of tasks unfinished. I decide to get up and read for a while. I
know the shelf in my library where I keep the book I want. The book has
no name, but I find it without difficulty. I settle myself comfortably
in the morris-chair, the great book open on my knee. Not a word can I
make out, the pages are utterly blank. I am not surprised, but keenly
disappointed. I finger the pages, I bend over them lovingly, the tears
fall on my hands. I shut the book quickly as the thought passes through
my mind, "The print will be all rubbed out if I get it wet." Yet there
is no print tangible on the page!
This morning I thought that I awoke. I was certain that I had overslept.
I seized my watch, and sure enough, it pointed to an hour after my
rising time. I sprang up in the greatest hurry, knowing that breakfast
was ready. I called my mother, who declared that my watch must be
wrong. She was positive it could not be so late. I looked at my watch
again, and lo! the hands wiggled, whirled, buzzed and disappeared. I
awoke more fully as my dismay grew, until I was at the antipodes of
sleep. Finally my eyes opened actually, and I knew that I had been
dreaming. I had only waked into sleep. What is still more bewildering,
there is no difference between the consciousness of the sham waking and
that of the real one.
It is fearful to think that all that we have ever seen, felt, read, and
done may suddenly rise to our dream-vision, as the sea casts up objects
it has swallowed. I have held a little child in my arms in the midst of
a riot and spoken vehemently, imploring the Russian soldiers not to
massacre the Jews. I have re-lived the agonizing scenes of the Sepoy
Rebellion and the French Revolution. Cities have burned before my eyes,
and I have fought the flames until I fell exhausted. Holocausts overtake
the world, and I struggle in vain to save my friends.
Once in a dream a message came speeding over land and sea that winter
was descending upon the world from the North Pole, that the Arctic zone
was shifting to our mild climate. Far and wide the message flew. The
ocean was congealed in midsummer. Ships were held fast in the ice by
thousands, the ships with large, white sails were held fast. Riches of
the Orient and the plenteous harvests of the Golden West might no more
pass between nation and nation. For some time the trees and flowers
grew on, despite the intense cold. Birds flew into the houses for
safety, and those which winter had overtaken lay on the snow with wings
spread in vain flight. At last the foliage and blossoms fell at the feet
of Winter. The petals of the flowers were turned to rubies and
sapphires. The leaves froze into emeralds. The trees moaned and tossed
their branches as the frost pierced them through bark and sap, pierced
into their very roots. I shivered myself awake, and with a tumult of joy
I breathed the many sweet morning odours wakened by the summer sun.
One need not visit an African jungle or an Indian forest to hunt the
tiger. One can lie in bed amid downy pillows and dream tigers as
terrible as any in the pathless wild. I was a little girl when one night
I tried to cross the garden in front of my aunt's house in Alabama. I
was in pursuit of a large cat with a great bushy tail. A few hours
before he had clawed my little canary out of its cage and crunched it
between his cruel teeth. I could not see the cat. But the thought in my
mind was distinct: "He is making for the high grass at the end of the
garden. I'll get there first!" I put my hand on the box border and ran
swiftly along the path. When I reached the high grass, there was the cat
gliding into the wavy tangle. I rushed forward and tried to seize him
and take the bird from between his teeth. To my horror a huge beast, not
the cat at all, sprang out from the grass, and his sinewy shoulder
rubbed against me with palpitating strength! His ears stood up and
quivered with anger. His eyes were hot. His nostrils were large and wet.
His lips moved horribly. I knew it was a tiger, a real live tiger, and
that I should be devoured--my little bird and I. I do not know what
happened after that. The next important thing seldom happens in dreams.
Some time earlier I had a dream which made a vivid impression upon me.
My aunt was weeping because she could not find me. But I took an impish
pleasure in the thought that she and others were searching for me, and
making great noise which I felt through my feet. Suddenly the spirit of
mischief gave way to uncertainty and fear. I felt cold. The air smelt
like ice and salt. I tried to run; but the long grass tripped me, and I
fell forward on my face. I lay very still, feeling with all my body.
After a while my sensations seemed to be concentrated in my fingers, and
I perceived that the grass blades were sharp as knives, and hurt my
hands cruelly. I tried to get up cautiously, so as not to cut myself on
the sharp grass. I put down a tentative foot, much as my kitten treads
for the first time the primeval forest in the backyard. All at once I
felt the stealthy patter of something creeping, creeping, creeping
purposefully toward me. I do not know how at that time the idea was in
my mind; I had no words for intention or purpose. Yet it was precisely
the evil intent, and not the creeping animal that terrified me. I had
no fear of living creatures. I loved my father's dogs, the frisky little
calf, the gentle cows, the horses and mules that ate apples from my
hand, and none of them had ever harmed me. I lay low, waiting in
breathless terror for the creature to spring and bury its long claws in
my flesh. I thought, "They will feel like turkey-claws." Something warm
and wet touched my face. I shrieked, struck out frantically, and awoke.
Something was still struggling in my arms. I held on with might and main
until I was exhausted, then I loosed my hold. I found dear old Belle,
the setter, shaking herself and looking at me reproachfully. She and I
had gone to sleep together on the rug, and had naturally wandered to the
dream-forest where dogs and little girls hunt wild game and have
strange adventures. We encountered hosts of elfin foes, and it required
all the dog tactics at Belle's command to acquit herself like the lady
and huntress that she was. Belle had her dreams too. We used to lie
under the trees and flowers in the old garden, and I used to laugh with
delight when the magnolia leaves fell with little thuds, and Belle
jumped up, thinking she had heard a partridge. She would pursue the
leaf, point it, bring it back to me and lay it at my feet with a
humorous wag of her tail as much as to say, "This is the kind of bird
that waked me." I made a chain for her neck out of the lovely blue
Paulownia flowers and covered her with great heart-shaped leaves.
Dear old Belle, she has long been dreaming among the lotus-flowers and
poppies of the dogs' paradise.
Certain dreams have haunted me since my childhood. One which recurs
often proceeds after this wise: A spirit seems to pass before my face. I
feel an extreme heat like the blast from an engine. It is the embodiment
of evil. I must have had it first after the day that I nearly got burnt.
Another spirit which visits me often brings a sensation of cool
dampness, such as one feels on a chill November night when the window is
open. The spirit stops just beyond my reach, sways back and forth like a
creature in grief. My blood is chilled, and seems to freeze in my veins.
I try to move, but my body is still, and I cannot even cry out. After a
while the spirit passes on, and I say to myself shudderingly, "That was
Death. I wonder if he has taken her." The pronoun stands for my Teacher.
In my dreams I have sensations, odours, tastes and ideas which I do not
remember to have had in reality. Perhaps they are the glimpses which my
mind catches through the veil of sleep of my earliest babyhood. I have
heard "the trampling of many waters." Sometimes a wonderful light visits
me in sleep. Such a flash and glory as it is! I gaze and gaze until it
vanishes. I smell and taste much as in my waking hours; but the sense of
touch plays a less important part. In sleep I almost never grope. No one
guides me. Even in a crowded street I am self-sufficient, and I enjoy
an independence quite foreign to my physical life. Now I seldom spell on
my fingers, and it is still rarer for others to spell into my hand. My
mind acts independent of my physical organs. I am delighted to be thus
endowed, if only in sleep; for then my soul dons its winged sandals and
joyfully joins the throng of happy beings who dwell beyond the reaches
of bodily sense.
The moral inconsistency of dreams is glaring. Mine grow less and less
accordant with my proper principles. I am nightly hurled into an
unethical medley of extremes. I must either defend another to the last
drop of my blood or condemn him past all repenting. I commit murder,
sleeping, to save the lives of others. I ascribe to those I love best
acts and words which it mortifies me to remember, and I cast reproach
after reproach upon them. It is fortunate for our peace of mind that
most wicked dreams are soon forgotten. Death, sudden and awful, strange
loves and hates remorselessly pursued, cunningly plotted revenge, are
seldom more than dim haunting recollections in the morning, and during
the day they are erased by the normal activities of the mind. Sometimes
immediately on waking, I am so vexed at the memory of a dream-fracas, I
wish I may dream no more. With this wish distinctly before me I drop off
again into a new turmoil of dreams.
Oh, dreams, what opprobrium I heap upon you--you, the most pointless
things imaginable, saucy apes, brewers of odious contrasts, haunting
birds of ill omen, mocking echoes, unseasonable reminders,
oft-returning vexations, skeletons in my morris-chair, jesters in the
tomb, death's-heads at the wedding feast, outlaws of the brain that
every night defy the mind's police service, thieves of my Hesperidean
apples, breakers of my domestic peace, murderers of sleep. "Oh, dreadful
dreams that do fright my spirit from her propriety!" No wonder that
Hamlet preferred the ills he knew rather than run the risk of one
dream-vision.
Yet remove the dream-world, and the loss is inconceivable. The magic
spell which binds poetry together is broken. The splendour of art and
the soaring might of imagination are lessened because no phantom of
fadeless sunsets and flowers urges onward to a goal. Gone is the mute
permission or connivance which emboldens the soul to mock the limits of
time and space, forecast and gather in harvests of achievement for ages
yet unborn. Blot out dreams, and the blind lose one of their chief
comforts; for in the visions of sleep they behold their belief in the
seeing mind and their expectation of light beyond the blank, narrow
night justified. Nay, our conception of immortality is shaken. Faith,
the motive-power of human life, flickers out. Before such vacancy and
bareness the shocks of wrecked worlds were indeed welcome. In truth,
dreams bring us the thought independently of us and in spite of us that
the soul
"may right
Her nature, shoot large sail on lengthening cord,
And rush exultant on the Infinite."
DREAMS AND REALITY
XIV
DREAMS AND REALITY
IT is astonishing to think how our real wide-awake world revolves around
the shadowy unrealities of Dreamland. Despite all that we say about the
inconsequence of dreams, we often reason by them. We stake our greatest
hopes upon them. Nay, we build upon them the fabric of an ideal world. I
can recall few fine, thoughtful poems, few noble works of art or any
system of philosophy in which there is not evidence that dream-fantasies
symbolize truths concealed by phenomena.
The fact that in dreams confusion reigns, and illogical connections
occur gives plausibility to the theory which Sir Arthur Mitchell and
other scientific men hold, that our dream-thinking is uncontrolled and
undirected by the will. The will--the inhibiting and guiding
power--finds rest and refreshment in sleep, while the mind, like a
barque without rudder or compass, drifts aimlessly upon an uncharted
sea. But curiously enough, these fantasies and inter-twistings of
thought are to be found in great imaginative poems like Spenser's "Færie
Queene." Lamb was impressed by the analogy between our dream-thinking
and the work of the imagination. Speaking of the episode in the cave of
Mammon, Lamb wrote:
"It is not enough to say that the whole episode is a copy of the mind's
conceptions in sleep; it is--in some sort, but what a copy! Let the most
romantic of us that has been entertained all night with the spectacle of
some wild and magnificent vision, re-combine it in the morning and try
it by his waking judgment. That which appeared so shifting and yet so
coherent, when it came under cool examination, shall appear so
reasonless and so unlinked, that we are ashamed to have been so deluded,
and to have taken, though but in sleep, a monster for a god. The
transitions in this episode are every whit as violent as in the most
extravagant dream, and yet the waking judgment ratifies them."
Perhaps I feel more than others the analogy between the world of our
waking life and the world of dreams because before I was taught, I lived
in a sort of perpetual dream. The testimony of parents and friends who
watched me day after day is the only means that I have of knowing the
actuality of those early, obscure years of my childhood. The physical
acts of going to bed and waking in the morning alone mark the transition
from reality to Dreamland. As near as I can tell, asleep or awake I only
felt with my body. I can recollect no process which I should now dignify
with the term of thought. It is true that my bodily sensations were
extremely acute; but beyond a crude connection with physical wants they
are not associated or directed. They had little relation to each other,
to me or the experience of others. Idea--that which gives identity and
continuity to experience--came into my sleeping and waking existence at
the same moment with the awakening of self-consciousness. Before that
moment my mind was in a state of anarchy in which meaningless sensations
rioted, and if thought existed, it was so vague and inconsequent, it
cannot be made a part of discourse. Yet before my education began, I
dreamed. I know that I must have dreamed because I recall no break in my
tactual experiences. Things fell suddenly, heavily. I felt my clothing
afire, or I fell into a tub of cold water. Once I smelt bananas, and the
odour in my nostrils was so vivid that in the morning, before I was
dressed, I went to the sideboard to look for the bananas. There were no
bananas, and no odour of bananas anywhere! My life was in fact a dream
throughout.
The likeness between my waking state and the sleeping one is still
marked. In both states I see, but not with my eyes. I hear, but not with
my ears. I speak, and am spoken to, without the sound of a voice. I am
moved to pleasure by visions of ineffable beauty which I have never
beheld in the physical world. Once in a dream I held in my hand a pearl.
The one I saw in my dreams must, therefore, have been a creation of my
imagination. It was a smooth, exquisitely moulded crystal. As I gazed
into its shimmering deeps, my soul was flooded with an ecstasy of
tenderness, and I was filled with wonder as one who should for the
first time look into the cool, sweet heart of a rose. My pearl was dew
and fire, the velvety green of moss, the soft whiteness of lilies, and
the distilled hues and sweetness of a thousand roses. It seemed to me,
the soul of beauty was dissolved in its crystal bosom. This beauteous
vision strengthens my conviction that the world which the mind builds up
out of countless subtle experiences and suggestions is fairer than the
world of the senses. The splendour of the sunset my friends gaze at
across the purpling hills is wonderful. But the sunset of the inner
vision brings purer delight because it is the worshipful blending of all
the beauty that we have known and desired.
I believe that I am more fortunate in my dreams than most people; for
as I think back over my dreams, the pleasant ones seem to predominate,
although we naturally recall most vividly and tell most eagerly the
grotesque and fantastic adventures in Slumberland. I have friends,
however, whose dreams are always troubled and disturbed. They wake
fatigued and bruised, and they tell me that they would give a kingdom
for one dreamless night. There is one friend who declares that she has
never had a felicitous dream in her life. The grind and worry of the day
invade the sweet domain of sleep and weary her with incessant,
profitless effort. I feel very sorry for this friend, and perhaps it is
hardly fair to insist upon the pleasure of dreaming in the presence of
one whose dream-experience is so unhappy. Still, it is true that my
dreams have uses as many and sweet as those of adversity. All my
yearning for the strange, the weird, the ghostlike is gratified in
dreams. They carry me out of the accustomed and commonplace. In a flash,
in the winking of an eye they snatch the burden from my shoulder, the
trivial task from my hand and the pain and disappointment from my heart,
and I behold the lovely face of my dream. It dances round me with merry
measure and darts hither and thither in happy abandon. Sudden, sweet
fancies spring forth from every nook and corner, and delightful
surprises meet me at every turn. A happy dream is more precious than
gold and rubies.
I like to think that in dreams we catch glimpses of a life larger than
our own. We see it as a little child, or as a savage who visits a
civilized nation. Thoughts are imparted to us far above our ordinary
thinking. Feelings nobler and wiser than any we have known thrill us
between heart-beats. For one fleeting night a princelier nature captures
us, and we become as great as our aspirations. I daresay we return to
the little world of our daily activities with as distorted a half-memory
of what we have seen as that of the African who visited England, and
afterwards said he had been in a huge hill which carried him over great
waters. The comprehensiveness of our thought, whether we are asleep or
awake, no doubt depends largely upon our idiosyncrasies, constitution,
habits, and mental capacity. But whatever may be the nature of our
dreams, the mental processes that characterize them are analogous to
those which go on when the mind is not held to attention by the will.
A WAKING DREAM
XV
A WAKING DREAM
I HAVE sat for hours in a sort of reverie, letting my mind have its way
without inhibition and direction, and idly noted down the incessant beat
of thought upon thought, image upon image. I have observed that my
thoughts make all kinds of connections, wind in and out, trace
concentric circles, and break up in eddies of fantasy, just as in
dreams. One day I had a literary frolic with a certain set of thoughts
which dropped in for an afternoon call. I wrote for three or four hours
as they arrived, and the resulting record is much like a dream. I found
that the most disconnected, dissimilar thoughts came in arm-in-arm--I
dreamed a wide-awake dream. The difference is that in waking dreams I
can look back upon the endless succession of thoughts, while in the
dreams of sleep I can recall but few ideas and images. I catch broken
threads from the warp and woof of a pattern I cannot see, or glowing
leaves which have floated on a slumber-wind from a tree that I cannot
identify. In this reverie I held the key to the company of ideas. I give
my record of them to show what analogies exist between thoughts when
they are not directed and the behaviour of real dream-thinking.
I had an essay to write. I wanted my mind fresh and obedient, and all
its handmaidens ready to hold up my hands in the task. I intended to
discourse learnedly upon my educational experiences, and I was unusually
anxious to do my best. I had a working plan in my head for the essay,
which was to be grave, wise, and abounding in ideas. Moreover, it was to
have an academic flavour suggestive of sheepskin, and the reader was to
be duly impressed with the austere dignity of cap and gown. I shut
myself up in the study, resolved to beat out on the keys of my
typewriter this immortal chapter of my life-history. Alexander was no
more confident of conquering Asia with the splendid army which his
father Philip had disciplined than I was of finding my mental house in
order and my thoughts obedient. My mind had had a long vacation, and I
was now coming back to it in an hour that it looked not for me. My
situation was similar to that of the master who went into a far country
and expected on his home coming to find everything as he left it. But
returning he found his servants giving a party. Confusion was rampant.
There was fiddling and dancing and the babble of many tongues, so that
the voice of the master could not be heard. Though he shouted and beat
upon the gate, it remained closed.
So it was with me. I sounded the trumpet loud and long; but the vassals
of thought would not rally to my standard. Each had his arm round the
waist of a fair partner, and I know not what wild tunes "put life and
mettle into their heels." There was nothing to do. I looked about
helplessly upon my great retinue, and realized that it is not the
possession of a thing but the ability to use it which is of value. I
settled back in my chair to watch the pageant. It was rather pleasant
sitting there, "idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean," watching
my own thoughts at play. It was like thinking fine things to say without
taking the trouble to write them. I felt like Alice in Wonderland when
she ran at full speed with the red queen and never passed anything or
got anywhere.
The merry frolic went on madly. The dancers were all manner of thoughts.
There were sad thoughts and happy thoughts, thoughts suited to every
clime and weather, thoughts bearing the mark of every age and nation,
silly thoughts and wise thoughts, thoughts of people, of things, and of
nothing, good thoughts, impish thoughts, and large, gracious thoughts.
There they went swinging hand-in-hand in corkscrew fashion. An antic
jester in green and gold led the dance. The guests followed no order or
precedent. No two thoughts were related to each other even by the
fortieth cousinship. There was not so much as an international alliance
between them. Each thought behaved like a newly created poet.
"His mouth he could not ope,
But there flew out a trope."
Magical lyrics--oh, if I only had written them down! Pell-mell they came
down the sequestered avenues of my mind, this merry throng. With
bacchanal song and shout they came, and eye hath not since beheld
confusion worse confounded.
Shut your eyes, and see them come--the knights and ladies of my revel.
Plumed and turbaned they come, clad in mail and silken broideries,
gentle maids in Quaker gray, gay princes in scarlet cloaks, coquettes
with roses in their hair, monks in cowls that might have covered the
tall Minster Tower, demure little girls hugging paper dolls, and
rollicking school-boys with ruddy morning faces, an absent-minded
professor carrying his shoes under his arms and looking wise, followed
by cronies, fairies, goblins, and all the troops just loosed from Noah's
storm-tossed ark. They walked, they strutted, they soared, they swam,
and some came in through fire. One sprite climbed up to the moon on a
ladder made of leaves and frozen dew-drops. A peacock with a great
hooked bill flew in and out among the branches of a pomegranate-tree
pecking the rosy fruit. He screamed so loud that Apollo turned in his
chariot of flame and from his burnished bow shot golden arrows at him.
This did not disturb the peacock in the least; for he spread his
gem-like wings and flourished his wonderful, fire-tipped tail in the
very face of the sun-god! Then came Venus--an exact copy of my own
plaster cast--serene, calm-eyed, dancing "high and disposedly" like
Queen Elizabeth, surrounded by a troop of lovely Cupids mounted on
rose-tinted clouds, blown hither and thither by sweet winds, while all
around danced flowers and streams and queer little Japanese cherry-trees
in pots! They were followed by jovial Pan with green hair and jewelled
sandals, and by his side--I could scarcely believe my eyes!--walked a
modest nun counting her beads. At a little distance were seen three
dancers arm-in-arm, a lean, starved platitude, a rosy, dimpled joke, and
a steel-ribbed sermon on predestination. Close upon them came a whole
string of Nights with wind-blown hair and Days with faggots on their
backs. All at once I saw the ample figure of Life rise above the
whirling mass holding a naked child in one hand and in the other a
gleaming sword. A bear crouched at her feet, and all about her swirled
and glowed a multitudinous host of tiny atoms which sang all together,
"We are the will of God." Atom wedded atom, and chemical married
chemical, and the cosmic dance went on in changing, changeless measure,
until my head sang like a buzz-saw.
Just as I was thinking I would leave this scene of phantoms and take a
stroll in the quiet groves of Slumber I noticed a commotion near one of
the entrances to my enchanted palace. It was evident from the whispering
and buzzing that went round that more celebrities had arrived. The first
personage I saw was Homer, blind no more, leading by a golden chain the
white-beaked ships of the Achaians bobbing their heads and squawking
like so many white swans. Plato and Mother Goose with the numerous
children of the shoe came next. Simple Simon, Jill, and Jack who had had
his head mended, and the cat that fell into the cream--all these danced
in a giddy reel, while Plato solemnly discoursed on the laws of
Topsyturvy Land. Then followed grim-visaged Calvin and "violet-crowned,
sweet-smiling Sappho" who danced a Schottische. Aristophanes and Molière
joined for a measure, both talking at once, Molière in Greek and
Aristophanes in German. I thought this odd, because it occurred to me
that German was a dead language before Aristophanes was born.
Bright-eyed Shelley brought in a fluttering lark which burst into the
song of Chaucer's chanticleer. Henry Esmond gave his hand in a stately
minuet to Diana of the Crossways. He evidently did not understand her
nineteenth century wit; for he did not laugh. Perhaps he had lost his
taste for clever women. Anon Dante and Swedenborg came together
conversing earnestly about things remote and mystical. Swedenborg said
it was very warm. Dante replied that it might rain in the night.
Suddenly there was a great clamour, and I found that "The Battle of the
Books" had begun raging anew. Two figures entered in lively dispute. One
was dressed in plain homespun and the other wore a scholar's gown over a
suit of motley. I gathered from their conversation that they were Cotton
Mather and William Shakspere. Mather insisted that the witches in
"Macbeth" should be caught and hanged. Shakspere replied that the
witches had already suffered enough at the hands of commentators. They
were pushed aside by the twelve knights of the Round Table, who marched
in bearing on a salver the goose that laid golden eggs. "The Pope's
Mule" and "The Golden Bull" had a combat of history and fiction such as
I had read of in books, but never before witnessed. These little animals
were put to rout by a huge elephant which lumbered in with Rudyard
Kipling riding high on its trunk. The elephant changed suddenly to "a
rakish craft." (I do not know what a rakish craft is; but this was very
rakish and very crafty.) It must have been abandoned long ago by wild
pirates of the southern seas; for clinging to the rigging, and jovially
cheering as the ship went down, I made out a man with blazing eyes, clad
in a velveteen jacket. As the ship disappeared from sight, Falstaff
rushed to the rescue of the lonely navigator--and stole his purse! But
Miranda persuaded him to give it back. Stevenson said, "Who steals my
purse steals trash." Falstaff laughed and called this a good joke, as
good as any he had heard in his day.
This was the signal for a rushing swarm of quotations. They surged to
and fro, an inchoate throng of half finished phrases, mutilated
sentences, parodied sentiments, and brilliant metaphors. I could not
distinguish any phrases or ideas of my own making. I saw a poor, ragged,
shrunken sentence that might have been mine own catch the wings of a
fair idea with the light of genius shining like a halo about its head.
Ever and anon the dancers changed partners without invitation or
permission. Thoughts fell in love at sight, married in a measure, and
joined hands without previous courtship. An incongruity is the wedding
of two thoughts which have had no reasonable courtship, and marriages
without wooing are apt to lead to domestic discord, even to the breaking
up of an ancient, time-honoured family. Among the wedded couples were
certain similes hitherto inviolable in their bachelorhood and
spinsterhood, and held in great respect. Their extraordinary proceedings
nearly broke up the dance. But the fatuity of their union was evident to
them, and they parted. Other similes seemed to have the habit of living
in discord. They had been many times married and divorced. They belonged
to the notorious society of Mixed Metaphors.
A company of phantoms floated in and out wearing tantalizing garments
of oblivion. They seemed about to dance, then vanished. They reappeared
half a dozen times, but never unveiled their faces. The imp Curiosity
pulled Memory by the sleeve and said, "Why do they run away? 'Tis
strange knavery!" Out ran Memory to capture them. After a great deal of
racing and puffing and collision it apprehended some of the fugitives
and brought them in. But when it tore off their masks, lo! some were
disappointingly commonplace, and others were gipsy quotations trying to
conceal the punctuation marks that belonged to them. Memory was much
chagrined to have had such a hard chase only to catch this sorry lot of
graceless rogues.
Into the rabble strode four stately giants who called themselves
History, Philosophy, Law, and Medicine. They seemed too solemn and
imposing to join in a masque. But even as I gazed at these formidable
guests, they all split into fragments which went whirling, dancing in
divisions, subdivisions, re-subdivisions of scientific nonsense! History
split into philology, ethnology, anthropology, and mythology, and these
again split finer than the splitting of hairs. Each speciality hugged
its bit of knowledge and waltzed it round and round. The rest of the
company began to nod, and I felt drowsy myself. To put an end to the
solemn gyrations, a troop of fairies mercifully waved poppies over us
all, the masque faded, my head fell, and I started. Sleep had wakened
me. At my elbow I found my old friend Bottom.
"Bottom," I said, "I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what
dream it was. Methought I was--there is no man can tell what. The eye of
man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, his hand is not able
to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream
was."
A CHANT OF DARKNESS
A CHANT OF DARKNESS
"_My wings are folded o'er mine ears,
My wings are crossèd o'er mine eyes,
Yet through their silver shade appears,
And through their lulling plumes arise,
A Shape, a throng of sounds._"
_Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound."_
I DARE not ask why we are reft of light,
Banished to our solitary isles amid the unmeasured seas,
Or how our sight was nurtured to glorious vision,
To fade and vanish and leave us in the dark alone.
The secret of God is upon our tabernacle;
Into His mystery I dare not pry. Only this I know:
With Him is strength, with Him is wisdom,
And His wisdom hath set darkness in our paths.
_Out of the uncharted, unthinkable dark we came,
And in a little time we shall return again
Into the vast, unanswering dark._
O Dark! thou awful, sweet, and holy Dark!
In thy solemn spaces, beyond the human eye,
God fashioned His universe; laid the foundations of the earth,
Laid the measure thereof, and stretched the line upon it;
Shut up the sea with doors, and made the glory
Of the clouds a covering for it;
Commanded His morning, and, behold! chaos fled
Before the uplifted face of the sun;
Divided a water-course for the overflowing of waters;
Sent rain upon the earth--
Upon the wilderness wherein there was no man,
Upon the desert where grew no tender herb,
And, lo! there was greenness upon the plains,
And the hills were clothed with beauty!
_Out of the uncharted, unthinkable dark we came,
And in a little time we shall return again
Into the vast, unanswering dark._
O Dark! thou secret and inscrutable Dark!
In thy silent depths, the springs whereof man hath not fathomed,
God wrought the soul of man.
O Dark! compassionate, all-knowing Dark!
Tenderly, as shadows to the evening, comes thy message to man.
Softly thou layest thy hand on his tired eyelids,
And his soul, weary and homesick, returns
Unto thy soothing embrace.
_Out of the uncharted, unthinkable dark we came,
And in a little time we shall return again
Into the vast, unanswering dark._
O Dark! wise, vital, thought-quickening Dark!
In thy mystery thou hidest the light
That is the soul's life.
Upon thy solitary shores I walk unafraid;
I dread no evil; though I walk in the valley of the shadow,
I shall not know the ecstasy of fear
When gentle Death leads me through life's open door,
When the bands of night are sundered,
And the day outpours its light.
_Out of the uncharted, unthinkable dark we came,
And in a little time we shall return again
Into the vast, unanswering dark._
The timid soul, fear-driven, shuns the dark;
But upon the cheeks of him who must abide in shadow
Breathes the wind of rushing angel-wings,
And round him falls a light from unseen fires.
Magical beams glow athwart the darkness;
Paths of beauty wind through his black world
To another world of light,
Where no veil of sense shuts him out from Paradise.
_Out of the uncharted, unthinkable dark we came,
And in a little time we shall return again
Into the vast, unanswering dark._
O Dark! thou blessèd, quiet Dark!
To the lone exile who must dwell with thee
Thou art benign and friendly;
From the harsh world thou dost shut him in;
To him thou whisperest the secrets of the wondrous night;
Upon him thou bestowest regions wide and boundless as his spirit;
Thou givest a glory to all humble things;
With thy hovering pinions thou coverest all unlovely objects;
Under thy brooding wings there is peace.
_Out of the uncharted, unthinkable dark we came,
And in a little time we shall return again
Into the vast, unanswering dark._
II
Once in regions void of light I wandered;
In blank darkness I stumbled,
And fear led me by the hand;
My feet pressed earthward,
Afraid of pitfalls.
By many shapeless terrors of the night affrighted,
To the wakeful day
I held out beseeching arms.
Then came Love, bearing in her hand
The torch that is the light unto my feet,
And softly spoke Love: "Hast thou
Entered into the treasures of darkness?
Hast thou entered into the treasures of the night?
Search out thy blindness. It holdeth
Riches past computing."
The words of Love set my spirit aflame.
My eager fingers searched out the mysteries,
The splendours, the inmost sacredness, of things,
And in the vacancies discerned
With spiritual sense the fullness of life;
And the gates of Day stood wide.
I am shaken with gladness;
My limbs tremble with joy;
My heart and the earth
Tremble with happiness;
The ecstasy of life
Is abroad in the world.
Knowledge hath uncurtained heaven;
On the uttermost shores of darkness there is light;
Midnight hath sent forth a beam!
The blind that stumbled in darkness without light
Behold a new day!
In the obscurity gleams the star of Thought;
Imagination hath a luminous eye,
And the mind hath a glorious vision.
III
"The man is blind. What is life to him?
A closed book held up against a sightless face.
Would that he could see
Yon beauteous star, and know
For one transcendent moment
The palpitating joy of sight!"
All sight is of the soul.
Behold it in the upward flight
Of the unfettered spirit! Hast thou seen
Thought bloom in the blind child's face?
Hast thou seen his mind grow,
Like the running dawn, to grasp
The vision of the Master?
It was the miracle of inward sight.
In the realms of wonderment where I dwell
I explore life with my hands;
I recognize, and am happy;
My fingers are ever athirst for the earth,
And drink up its wonders with delight,
Draw out earth's dear delights;
My feet are charged with the murmur,
The throb, of all things that grow.
This is touch, this quivering,
This flame, this ether,
This glad rush of blood,
This daylight in my heart,
This glow of sympathy in my palms!
Thou blind, loving, all-prying touch,
Thou openest the book of life to me.
The noiseless little noises of the earth
Come with softest rustle;
The shy, sweet feet of life;
The silky mutter of moth-wings
Against my restraining palm;
The strident beat of insect-wings,
The silvery trickle of water;
Little breezes busy in the summer grass;
The music of crisp, whisking, scurrying leaves,
The swirling, wind-swept, frost-tinted leaves;
The crystal splash of summer rain,
Saturate with the odours of the sod.
With alert fingers I listen
To the showers of sound
That the wind shakes from the forest.
I bathe in the liquid shade
Under the pines, where the air hangs cool
After the shower is done.
My saucy little friend the squirrel
Flips my shoulder with his tail,
Leaps from leafy billow to leafy billow,
Returns to eat his breakfast from my hand.
Between us there is glad sympathy;
He gambols; my pulses dance;
I am exultingly full of the joy of life!
Have not my fingers split the sand
On the sun-flooded beach?
Hath not my naked body felt the water sing
When the sea hath enveloped it
With rippling music?
Have I not felt
The lilt of waves beneath my boat,
The flap of sail,
The strain of mast,
The wild rush
Of the lightning-charged winds?
Have I not smelt the swift, keen flight
Of winged odours before the tempest?
Here is joy awake, aglow;
Here is the tumult of the heart.
My hands evoke sight and sound out of feeling,
Intershifting the senses endlessly;
Linking motion with sight, odour with sound
They give colour to the honeyed breeze,
The measure and passion of a symphony
To the beat and quiver of unseen wings.
In the secrets of earth and sun and air
My fingers are wise;
They snatch light out of darkness,
They thrill to harmonies breathed in silence.
I walked in the stillness of the night,
And my soul uttered her gladness.
O Night, still, odorous Night, I love thee!
O wide, spacious Night, I love thee!
O steadfast, glorious Night!
I touch thee with my hands;
I lean against thy strength;
I am comforted.
O fathomless, soothing Night!
Thou art a balm to my restless spirit,
I nestle gratefully in thy bosom,
Dark, gracious mother!
Like a dove, I rest in thy bosom.
_Out of the uncharted, unthinkable dark we came,
And in a little time we shall return again
Into the vast, unanswering dark._
PRINTED BY
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.
PLYMOUTH
* * * * *
Transcriber's Note:
Page 223, "similies" changed to "similes" (Other similes seemed)
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