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 mans 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 minds 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
Platos solid firmament of glassy spheres? Would they mand Darwin
from the grave and bid him blot out his geological time; give us back a
paltry few thousand years? Oh; the supercilious dou