better understood, the sympathy will be more
equally balanced; and, we imagine, will
finally transcend all that is felt for any other
imperfect beings, except the mentally
deficient. The blind are, on the whole, pretty
well aware of their own case. Not only those
who have become blind know what they lose,
but those who are born blind, gather enough
from the people about them to be in a
great degree sensible of their privations; and
the thing to be looked to in their case is to
keep them cheerful and happy; whereas the
deaf and dumb are so oddly complacent, so
conceited and flippant, so given to joke and
quiz, that their guardians have rather to
repress their levity, and take down their
complacency. And here again is another natural
and general reason why the blind inspire the
readier and more general sympathy. They
are the superior and the more consciously
suffering order; although their case is infinitely
the less really unfortunate of the two.

With all this sympathy, however, the case
of the blind never even began to be truly
considered until the structure and functions of the
brain began to be understood. Certain powers
and acts of the blind seemed as like a miracle,
up to a quarter of a century ago, as the idiot
striking the hours in the absence of all
clocks and watches. When the blind Dr.
Saunderson was dying, he said, in answer, to
the astonishment of a friend at his remark
about some matter of measurement, "Ah!
this is one of the many things we blind
people can do, that seem to surprise you very
much, but are very simple and natural to
us." During Dr. Saunderson's life, which
lasted fifty-seven years, his abilities were the
amazement of one king after another, one
philosopher after another, and doctors,
scholars, and common people out of number;
yet nobody seems to have learned a
lesson from him. He was only a year old when
he lost his sight by small-pox; so that he
could not be supposed to be qualified for his
subsequent attainments by anything he had
seen in that time. No doubt, even that much
experience of light, form, and colour, was of
high value to him. When we consider how
an infant of a year old knows father and
mother, and the cat, and the moon, and likes
flowers and gay colours, and tries to catch
flies and birds, we may understand that,
whether Dr. Saunderson was conscious of it
or not, his notions of persons and things must
have been very different from those of one who
had never received any impressions through
the eye at all. The general action of his mind
must have been aided by the brief glimpse of
light that was allowed him; but his peculiar
attainments were precisely those in which
sight is least needed; though observers at
the time, and his biographers since, have
noted as a sort of miracle his achievement of
much that they are accustomed to use their
eyes about, and therefore suppose to be
impossible of accomplishment without eyes.
They are not so much astonished at his telling
more accurately than anybody else the size of
a room by the sound of the voices and
footsteps in it; nor at his telling by the feel in
the open air when the smallest fleece of
cloud passed over the sun. Whatever he
could learn by nicety of sense they can
believe in at once. And his classical learning,
—so great that he lectured in admirable
Latin, with plenty of Greek citation,—they
can easily admit, understanding how oral
instruction might serve his turn. It was his
geography, mathematics, and astronomy that
amazed them. That a man who could
hardly be said ever to have seen earth
or heaven should be the friend and
commentator of Newton, should announce
discoveries about the equator and the poles, should
describe the solar system, with its motions,
and its forms, and its spaces, without ever
seeing sun, moon, or star; these were the
things that seemed marvellous to other
people, but very simple and natural to
himself. Whereas, now that we know what separate
faculties we have for these things, they seem
almost as simple and natural to us. Mental
arithmetic is a common exercise, in most
good schools. The shapes of things are as
readily known, by touch as by sight, by all
who practise going about in the dark; and
the blind pupils of every asylum show that
this is quite as easy without ever having seen
the form. The difference between them and
us, is, that if they were to see the objects they
would probably not know them before touching
them; though even this turns out to be
not quite so certain as it was supposed some
time ago. More of that when we have done
with Dr. Saunderson. As for his geographical
knowledge, why should he not have it
as well as we? When once he had learned
in his walks how much a mile was, why
should he not extend the conception to one
hundred miles or one thousand, as well as
we? And when he had learned any form
at all, why not the form of a continent, or a
river-course, or a chain of mountains? What
he did not know was, what they all looked
like; which is not precisely the question in
geography. Accordingly, in all good schools
for the blind, there are globes and maps with
an embossed surface, instead of black, white,
and coloured marks. In a foreign country
where we travelled several thousand miles,
twenty years ago, we met with a blind boy,
who was much interested in hearing of our
travels. He got his embossed map, and
traced our route, without a single mistake,
up one river and down another; over the
mountains, now south, now west; there was
not a town, nor any chief stage of that great
journey, that he did not put his finger on.
To him, as to Dr. Saunderson and all his
class when educated, this thing seemed very
simple and natural. Dr. Saunderson learned
his Greek and Latin at a Yorkshire school,
where he took his chance among other boys.