Edellinen sivu I
will throw without order, on paper, of the phenomena which were not known to me,
and which will be used of evidence or refutations with some paragraphs of my Letter
on the blind men. There is thirty-three at thirty-four years that I wrote
it ; I read again it without partiality, and I of it am not too
dissatisfied. Though the first part appeared more interesting about it to me
than the second, and than I felt that that one could be a little wider and this
one much shorter, I will leave them one and the other such as I did them, for
fear the page of the young man did not become better about it by the final
improvement of the old man. What there is the bearable one in the ideas and the
expression, I believe that I would seek it unnecessarily today, and I fear to be
also unable to correct what there is the reprehensible one. A painter celebrates
nowadays employs the last years of his life to spoil the masterpieces which it
produced in the strength of his age. I do not know if the defects that it remark
are real there ; but the talent which would rectify them, or it never had
it if it carried the imitations of nature until the last limits of art, or, if
it had it, it lost it, because all that is of the man perishes with the man. It
comes a time when the taste gives councils which one recognizes the accuracy,
but that one does not have any more the force to follow.
It
is the pusillanimity which is born from the conscience of the weakness, or the
idleness, which is one of the continuations of the weakness and the
pusillanimity, which disgusts me of a work which would harm more than it would
not be used for the improvement of my work.
Mature
Solve svenescentem sanus equum,
Peccet
AD extremum ridendus, and ilia ducat.
Horat. Epistolar. lib. 1,
Epist. I, towards. 8, 9.
I.
An artist who has à.fond the theory of his art, and which does not yield it to
any other in practice, ensured me that it was by tact and not by the sight that
it judged roundness of the pinions ; that it made them roll gently between
the inch and the index, and that it was by the successive impression that it
distinguished light inequalities which would escape in its eye.
II.
One spoke to me about a blind man who knew with the touch which was the color of
the fabrics.
III.
I could about it quote one which moderates bouquets with this delicacy whose
J.-J. Rousseau was pricked when it entrusted to his friends, seriously or by
joke, the intention opening a school where it would give lessons to the bouquetières
of Paris.
IV.
The town of Amiens saw a fitter plugs to lead a workshop many with as much
intelligence than if it had enjoyed his eyes.
V
The use of the eyes removed with clear-sighted safety of the hand ; to
shave the head, it drew aside the mirror and was placed in front of a naked wall.
The blind man who does not see the danger becomes all the more intrepid about it,
and I do not doubt that it did not go of a more firm step on narrow boards and
rubber bands which would form a bridge on a chasm. There are few people of which
the aspect great depths does not darken the sight.
VI.
Who did not know or not intended to speak about famous Daviel ? I assisted
several, time at his operations. It had cut down the cataract with a blacksmith
who had contracted this disease with the continual fire of his furnace ;
and during the twenty-five years that it had ceased seeing, it had taken such a
practice to be reported of it to the touch, that it had to be maltreated to urge
it to be useful itself of the direction which had been restored to him ;
Daviel said to him by striking it : , torturer want you to look at !...
It went, it acted ; all that we make the opened eyes, it did it, him, the
closed eyes.
One
could conclude from it that the eye is not also useful to our needs nor as
essential with our happiness as one would be tempted to believe it. Which is the
thing of the world including one long deprivation which is followed of no pain
did not return indifferent loss to us, if the spectacle of nature did not have
any more a charm for the blind man of Daviel ? Sight of a woman who would
be expensive to us ? I do not believe anything of it, whatever the
consequence owing to the fact that I will tell. One thinks that if one had spent
a long time without seeing, one would not weary oneself to look at ; that
is not true. What a difference between temporary blindness and usual blindness !
VII.
The benevolence of Daviel led, of all the provinces of the kingdom in its
laboratory, of the poor patients who came to beseech his help, and its
reputation called a curious, educated and many assembly there. I believe that we
formed part of it the same day, Mr. Marmontel and me. The patient had sat ;
here is its removed cataract ; Daviel poses its hand on eyes qu had just
reopened with the light. An old woman, upright beside him, showed the keenest
interest with the success of the operation ; she trembled of all her
members to each movement of the operator. This one beckons to him to approach,
and the place with knees opposite operated ; it moves away its hands, the
patient opens the eyes, it sees, it exclaims : Ah ! it is my mother !
... I never heard a more pathetic cry ; it seems to to me that I still hear
it. The old woman disappears, the tears run eyes of the assistants, and alms
fall from their purses.
VIII.
Of all the people who were private sight almost while being born, more
surprising which existed and which will exist, it is Miss Melanie de Salignac,
relationship of Mr. of Fargue, lieutenant general of the armies of the king, old
man who has just died old of quatre-vingt-onze years, cover of wounds and filled
honors ; she is girl of Mrs. de Blacy, who still saw and who does not spend
a day without regretting a child who made the happiness of his life and the
admiration of all his knowledge. Mrs. de Blacy is a woman distinguished by
eminence from her morals qualities, and which one can question on the truth of
my account. It is under its dictation that I collect life of Miss de Salignac
the characteristics which could escape to me from myself during a trade from
intimacy which started with it and its family in 1760, and which lasted until
1763, the year from its death.
It
had deep seas of reason, a charming softness, a not very common smoothness in
the ideas, and of the naivety. One of his/her aunts invited her mother to come
to help it to like nineteen ostrogoths that it had to dine, and his/her niece
said : I do not conceive anything with my dear aunt ; why like
nineteen ostrogoths ? For me, I want to like only those which I like.
The
sound of the voice had for it the same seduction or the same loathing as the
aspect for that which sees. One of his/her parents, receiver general of finances,
had with the family a bad process which it did not expect, and it said with
surprised : Who would have believed it of such a soft voice ? When
it intended to sing, it distinguished from the brown voices and the
fair voices.
When
one spoke to him, it judged the size by the direction of the sound which struck
it from top to bottom if the person were tall, or upwards if the person were
small.
It
did not worry to see ; and a day that I asked him for the reason of it :
" It is, answered me it, which I would have only my eyes, with the
place that I enjoyed the eyes of all ; it is that, by this deprivation, I
become a continual object of interest and commiseration ; constantly one
obliges me, and constantly I am grateful ; alas ! if I saw, soon one
would not occupy any more ego. "the errors of the sight had decreased
the price for it by them" I am, said it, with the entry of a long
alley ; there is at its end some object : one of you sees moving ;
the other sees it in rest ; one says that it is an animal, the other that
it is a man, and it is, while approaching, that it is a stock. All are unaware
of if the tower that they see with far is round or square. I face the swirls of
dust, while those which surround me leaven the eyes and become unhappy,
sometimes during a whole day, to have rather early closed them. One needs only
one unperceivable atom to cruelly torment them... "With the approach
of the night, it said that our reign was going to finish, and that it his
was going to start. It is conceived that, alive in darkness with the
practice to act and think during one night eternal, the insomnia which is so
annoying for us him was not even importunate.
It
that the blind men, deprived of the symptoms of the suffering, were to be cruel
"And you believe, did it say to me did not forgive me to have written,
that you hear the complaint like me ? There are the unhappy ones which can
suffer without complaining. - I believe, added it, that I would have guessed
them soon, and that I would feel sorry for them only more. "
It
be impassion for the reading and insane for the music " I believe, say
it, that I me weary never to intend sing or play supérieurement of a instrument,
and when this happiness be, in the sky, the only of which one enjoy, I be not
annoy to there be. You thought just when you ensure of the music that it was
most violent of the fine arts, without excluding neither poetry of it, nor the
eloquence ; that Racine even was not expressed with the delicacy of a
toothing-stone ; that its melody was heavy and monotonous in comparison of
that of an instrument, and that you had often wished to give to your style the
force and the lightness of the tone of Bach. For me, it is most beautiful of the
languages that I know. In the spoken languages, better one pronounces, more one
articulates his syllables ; to the place that, in the musical language,
the sounds furthest away from the low register to acute and acute with the low
register, are spun and follow themselves imperceptibly ; it is so to speak
only one and long syllable, which at every moment varies inflection and of
expression. While the melody carries this syllable to my ear, the harmony
carries out some without confusion, on a multitude of various instruments, two,
three, four or five, which all contribute to strengthen the expression of the
first, and the singing parts are as many interpreters without which I would do
well, when the symphonist is the man of genius and that it can give character to
his song.
" It
is especially in the silence of the night that the music is expressive and
delicious.
" I
convince myself that, inattentive by their eyes, those which see can neither
listen to it nor to hear it like I listen to it and I hear it. Why does the
praise that one makes me to me appear poor and weak ? why could I never
about it speak like I feel ? why did I stop in the medium of my speech,
seeking words which comb my feeling without finding them ? Wouldn't they be
invented yet ? I could compare the effect of the music only with the
intoxication which I test when, after a long absence, I precipitate between the
arms of my mother, that I miss the voice, that the members tremble me, that the
tears run, that the knees are concealed under me ; I am as if I were going
to die of pleasure. "
It
had the most delicate feeling of decency ; and when I asked him for the
reason of it : " It is, said to me it, the effect of the speeches
of my mother ; she repeated me so many times than the sight of certain
parts of the body invited to vice : and I would acknowledge you, if I dared,
that little time ago that I included/understood it, and that perhaps it was
necessary that I ceased being innocent. "
She
died of a tumour to the interior natural parts, which she had never courage to
declare.
She was, in her clothing, her
linen, on her person, of a all the more required
clearness as, not seeing, she was never rather sure to have done what it was
necessary to save those which see the dislike of the vice opposite.
If
one poured to him with drinking, she knew, with the noise of liquor while
falling, when its glass was rather full. She took food with a surprising
circumspection and an address.
She
made the joke sometimes be placed in front of a mirror to avoid itself, and
imitate all the mines of vain which is put under the weapons. This small singery
was of a truth to make burst of laughing.
One
had studied oneself, as of his more tender youth, to improve the directions
which remained to him, and it is incredible until where one had succeeded there.
Tact had learned to him, on the forms of the bodies, the singularities often
ignored of those which had the best eyes.
It
had the exquisite hearing and sense of smell ; it judged, with the
impression of the air, the state of the atmosphere, if time were nebulous or
serene, if it went in a place or a street, a street or a cul-de-sac, an open
place or a closed place, a vast apartment or a narrow room.
It
measured the space circumscribed by the noise of its feet or the repercussion of
its voice. When it had traversed a house, topography him remained about it in
the head, at the point to prevent the others on the small dangers to which they
were exposed : Take guard, said it, here the door is too low, there you
will find a walk.
It
noticed in the voices a variety which is unknown for us, and when it had
intended to speak a person sometimes, it was for always.
It
was not very sensitive to the charms of youth and little shocked wrinkles of old
age. It said that there were only qualities of the heart and the spirit which
were to be feared for it. It was still one of the advantages of the deprivation
of the sight, especially for the women.
Never,
she said, a beautiful man will not make me turn the head.
She
was trustful ! It was so easy, and it had been so ashamed of misleading it !
It was an inexcusable perfidy to let to him believe that it was alone in an
apartment.
She
did not have any kind of panic fear ; she seldom felt trouble ;
loneliness had learned how to him to be sufficed for itself. She had observed
that in the public cars, on a journey, with the fall of the day, one became
quiet. For me, she said, I do not need to see those with which I like to
maintain me.
Of
all qualities, they was the healthy judgement, softness and the gaity, which it
snuffed more.
It
spoke little and listened much : I resemble the birds, said it I learn how
to sing in darkness.
By
bringing closer what it had heard from one day to another, it was revolted
contradiction of our judgements : it appeared almost indifferent to him to
be rented, or blamed by so inconsistent beings.
One
had learned how to him to read with cut out characters.
It
had the pleasant voice ; it sang with taste ; it would have readily
passed its life to the concert or the Opera ; there was hardly but the
noisy music which annoyed it. It danced to charm ; it played very well of
over violate, and it had drawn from this talent a means of being made seek young
people of its age by learning the dances and the fines à.la.mode.
It
was liked his/her brothers and of his/her sisters " And here, she,
said which I still owe with my infirmities : one sticks to me by the care
that one returned to me and by the efforts which I made to recognize them and to
deserve them. Add that my brothers and my sisters of it are not jealous. If I
had eyes, it would be at the expense of my spirit and my heart. I have so many
reasons to be good ! what would I become if I lost the interest which I
inspire ? "
In
the inversion of the fortune of his/her parents, the loss of the Masters was the
only one that she regretted ; but they had as well attachment and regard
for it, as the geometrician and the musician begged it with authority to accept
their lessons free, and it said to her mother : Mom, how to make ?
they are not rich, and they need all their time.
One
had taught him the music by characters in relief which one placed on eminent
lines on the surface of a large table. It read these characters with the hand ;
it carried out them on its instrument, and in very little time of study it had
learned how to partly play the longest part and most complicated.
It
had elements of astronomy, algebra and geometry. His/her mother, who read to him
the book of the abbot of Ruail, asked him sometimes if it heard that : Very
running, it answered him.
She
claimed that the geometry was the true science of the blind men, because she
strongly applied, and that one needed no help to improve. The geometrician,
added it, passes almost all his life the closed eyes.
I
saw the charts on which it had studied the geography. The parallels and the
meridian lines are brass wire ; the limits of the kingdoms and the
provinces are distinguished by embroidery in wire, silk and more or less strong
wool ; rivers, rivers and mountains, by more or less large pinheads ;
and more or less considerable cities, by unequal wax drops.
I
said to him one day : " Miss, you appear a cube. - I see it. -
Imagine in the center of the cube a point. - It is done. - From this point draw
from the straight lines to the angles ; eh well, you will have divided the
cube. - In six equal pyramids, it added itself, having each one the same faces,
the base of the cube and half its height. - That is true ; but where you
see that ? - In my head, like you. "
I
acknowledge that I never conceived clearly how it appeared in its head without
colouring. This cube had it been formed by the memory of the feelings of the
touch ? Had its brain become a species of hand under which the substances
were carried out ? Had it been established with long kind of correspondence
between two various directions ? Why this trade exist doesn't in me, and I
do not see anything in my head if I do not colour ? What the imagination of
a blind man ? This phenomenon is not so easy to explain why it would be
believed.
It
wrote with a pin of which it pricked its paper sheet tended on a crossed
framework of two parallel and mobile blades, which left between them of empty
space only the interval of a line at another. The same writing was useful for
the answer, qu it read while walking the end of its finger on the small
inequalities which the pin or the needle had practised with the back of paper.
It read a book which one had drawn only on one side. Prault had printed of it
this manner with its use.
One
inserted in the Mercury of time one of his letters.
It
had had patience to copy with the needle the historical Summary of
president Hénault, and I obtained Madam de Blacy, his mother, this handwritten
singular.
Here
a fact that one will believe with difficulty, in spite of the testimony of all
its family, mine and that of twenty people who still exist ; it is that, of
part of twelve to fifteen worms, if one gave him the first letter and the number
of letters of which each word was composed, it found the part proposed, some odd
that it was. I made of it the experiment on amphigoris of Stuck. It met an
expression happier sometimes than that of the poet.
It
threaded with celerity the thinnest needle, by extending its wire or its silk on
the index of the left hand, and while drawing, by the eye of the needle placed
perpendicularly, this wire or this silk with a very untied point.
There
was no kind of small works which it did not carry out ; hems, purses full
or symmetrized, up to date, with various drawings, various colors ; jumpers,
bracelets, collars with small grains of glass, like letters of printing works. I
do not doubt that it had not been a good type-setter of printing works :
who can more, can less.
It
played the reversis perfectly, the mediator and squares it ; it arranged
itself its charts, which it distinguished by small features that it recognized
with the touch, and that the others recognized neither with the sight nor with
the touch. With the reversis, it changed signs with the aces, especially with
the ace of square and the quinola. The only attention which one had for it, it
was to name the chart by playing it. If it happened that the quinola was
threatened, he spread on his lip a light smile which it could not contain quoiqu
it knew the indiscretion of it.
It
was fatalistic ; it thought that the efforts that we made to escape from
our destiny were used only for us to lead to it. Which were its religious
opinions ? I am unaware of them ; it is a secrecy which it kept by
respect for a pious mother.
It
any more but does not remain me to expose you its ideas on the writing, the
drawing, engraving, painting ; I do not believe that one can about it have
closer to the truth ; it is thus, I hope, whom one will judge by the
maintenance which follows, and I am an interlocutor. It was it which spoke the
first.
" If
you had traced on my hand, with a stylet, a nose, a mouth, a man, a woman, a
tree, certainly I would not be mistaken there ; I would not even despair,
if the feature were exact, to recognize the person of which would have done you
to me the image : my hand would become for me a sensitive mirror ; but
large east the difference in sensitivity between this fabric and the body of the
sight. "
I
thus suppose that the eye is an alive fabric of an infinite delicacy ; the
air strikes the object, of this object it is considered towards the eye, which
receives an infinity of various impressions from it according to the nature, the
shape, the color of the object and perhaps qualities' of the air which are
unknown for me and which you do not know more than me ; and it is by the
variety of these feelings that it is painted to you.
If
the skin of my hand equalized the delicacy of your eyes, I would see by my hand
as you see by your eyes, and I appear myself sometimes that there are animals
which are blind, and which are not less clear-sighted.
-
And the mirror ?
-
If all the bodies are not as many mirrors, it is by some defect in their texture,
which extinguishes the reflexion of the air. I all the more hold with this idea,
that gold, the money, iron, copper polished, become clean to reflect the air,
and that water disturbs and the striped ice lose this property.
It
is the variety of the feeling, and consequently of the property to reflect the
air in the matters which you employ, who distinguishes the writing from the
drawing, the drawing of the print, and table stamps it.
The writing, the drawing, the
print, the table of only one color, are as many camaieux.
-
But when there is only one color, one should distinguish only this color.
-
It is apparently the bottom of the fabric, the thickness of the color and the
manner of the employer which introduce into the reflexion of the air a variety
corresponding to that of the forms. With the remainder, do not ask of it me
anything any more, I am not more erudite than that.
-
And I would give myself well useless sorrow for you to learn some more. "I
did not say, on this young blind man, all to you that I could about it have
observed by attending it more and by questioning it with genius but I give you
my word of honor that I you said anything of it but according to my experiment.
It died, twenty-two years
old. With an immense memory and a penetration equal to
its memory, what a way it would not have made in sciences, if longer days had
been granted to him ! His/her mother read the history to him, and it was an
also useful and pleasant function for one and the other.