His father, who was an exciseman, took great
pains in exercising him in arithmetic; and the
success was so remarkable that two gentlemen
undertook, when he was about eighteen,
to have him taught algebra and geometry.
He made his own signs,—an excellent system
of them,—on a board which had sets of pin-
holes, and pins with large and small heads.
His geometrical figures he made with pins
and threads. One fact worthy of notice is,
that he found great difficulty in understanding
a demonstration of Dr. Halley's which
appeared not very difficult to other
geometricians; but when he had got a notion of
what was wanted, he worked out the same
problem in his own way, so as to make it
clear to others as well as to himself. Dr.
Halley's statement, in fact, involved a visual
idea, of which probably no one concerned,
except the blind man, was aware. This blind
man succeeded Whiston, by Newton's
recommendation, in the mathematical professorship
at Cambridge. Queen Anne made him
Master of Arts for the purpose; and
George the Second made him Doctor of Laws.
A higher honour than all, his commentary on
Newton's Principia was published simply on
the ground of its value, nearly twenty years
after his death. Surely the case of a man
who, so long ago, used to sit with his board
before him, listening to the reading of Euclid
and Archimedes in Greek, should have
prepared us much sooner than it did to recognise
and train the faculties of the blind. How
was it that we went on for above a century
gaping and staring at this learned man,
without setting to work to see what other
blind people could do? Some say it was
because Dr. Saunderson's temper was very
bad. He was extremely quarrelsome,
certainly; but, so are some persons who can see;
and we are rather accustomed to suppose that
education will mend their tempers, than that
it can possibly make them worse. The good
exciseman who took such pains with his boy
may have indulged him too much, and may
have treated that temper of his with false
tenderness; but we presume it would have
been worse if so energetic and industrious a
nature had been left without object and
employment.

As to the difference between the blind and
the seeing about knowing form by the
eye, there are some curious facts on record.
It is, we believe, a very ancient puzzle whether
a person born blind and obtaining sight,
would know by the eye a cube from a globe.
However ancient it may be, the question was
revived when the great surgeon, Cheselden,
couched a boy who was born blind, and
observed what he could do with his new
sense; and again, when, a quarter of a
century ago, a great stir was made about educating
the blind. We ourselves were fond of
putting the question to all manner of persons,
and comparing the answers. Take a blind
boy, who has handled a globe all his life, and
who knows it perfectly well from his mother's
square work-box of the same size: restore his
sight, as Cheselden did, and show him the
globe (taken out of its frame) and the box set
side by side on the table. Don't let him
touch either; and then see if he can tell
which is the globe and which is the box. Can
he tell? Ignorant and thoughtless persons
say off-hand, "Tell! To be sure he can. If
he can see, how can he help knowing?"
Metaphysicians say (what we, in our metaphysical
years, used to say very confidently),
"Certainly not. The ideas of one sense are in their
very nature different from those of another
sense, and need to be combined by association.
Here, no association has been permitted, and
the sense is wholly new, and therefore he
cannot possibly tell the cube from the
globe." Now that we know more about the
brain and its faculties, men of science speak
much less confidently. They wish to try a
case before pronouncing; but they would not
be surprised at finding that the express
faculty of recognising form might serve for
the purpose, without the help of touch. In
this uncertainty, what facts have we? That
same boy was very fond of pears. He was
shown a pear and an apple lying side by side,
and told: "Now you know an apple from a
pear, by feeling it. Tell us, with your hands
behind your back, which is the pear, and you
shall have it." He looked and looked again,
his mouth watering all the time, and he could
not make it out. In an instant, he darted out
his hand, with his eyes shut, knew the pear
by the first touch, and ate it in a trice. So
we learn little by that, and that little seems
to show that he did not recognise form by
the eye.

The first feeling after the restoration
of sight, is, that everything seen touches
the eye, and when the person wants to lay
hold of any object, he lays hold of his own
eye. These bewildering impressions may
well confuse and confound the brain-action of
the sense. One of the most curious
perplexities of this same boy, came out of the
clasp of a bracelet. That clasp contained the
miniature of his father. He knew the portrait,
but was excessively distressed to know how
it could come there. Measuring it by his
father's face he could not make them agree;
and he said it was as unaccountable to him as
putting a quart of anything into a pint
measure. And yet it is said that Dr.
Saunderson could converse learnedly,—really with
perfect correctness—on the laws of perspective;
a proof, if the assertion be a fact, that
some things which seem most to depend on
sight are really independent of the eye, as
others are of the visual faculty itself.

We now know something of the latent
capacities in the blind. If ever we thought that
they could only make baskets, and mats, and
ropes, and play the organ passably, we now
perceive how much we were mistaken, and our
sense of duty towards that class of sufferers