First, let us consider the subject from the point of view of one who has
been blind from early infancy, whose fingers are his eyes, and whose
mental vision enables him to see many things not revealed by physical
sight. A blind man once said, when asked if he would not be glad to have
his eyesight, "to improve the organs I have, would be as good as to give
me that which is wanting in me." This sentence sums up the whole aim of
blind education. Dr. Eichholtz, a noted educator of the blind, says:
"Education of the blind absolutely fails in its object, in so far as it
fails to develop the remaining faculties to compensate for the want of
sight." "Touch and sight must be developed by means which practically in
all respects are dissimilar. A blind man discerns the sensation from the
real presence of an object at his fingers' end, only by the force or
weakness of that very sensation." So, then, let us consider that, to the
blind, fingers are eyes, and remember that they have ten instead of two.
As I have been blind since early infancy, my own case offers an
illustration in point, so I hope you will not misunderstand the
predominance of the personal note in these observations.
Blindness does not lead to any refinement of the senses of touch,
hearing or smell, but to a greater keenness in the interpretation of the
information furnished by these senses. Diderot says, "the help which our
senses reciprocally afford to each other, hinders their improvement,"
and so the person in possession of all the senses regards the blind man
as a marvel of intelligence and skill, just because, on losing his
eyesight, his remaining senses come to the rescue, and he continues to
live and move and have his being without the most precious of all
physical senses. In the world of the blind child eyesight plays no part,
and so the other senses are made to do double duty, and the extent to
which these may be cultivated is limited only by the mentality of the
child, its early training and environment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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