Five Lectures on Blindness | Page 5

I shall view it from the standpoint of one deprived of eyesight in adult life, who is taking his first step in the dark.
M. Diderot says: "The help which the senses reciprocally afford to each other hinders their improvement," and so the adult whose movements are no longer directed by his eyes, feels utterly helpless and bewildered, as one who finds himself on a strange road, very late at night, with no ray of light to guide him. As the blinded soldier is uppermost in our thought today, I am considering the mental condition of an adult suddenly deprived of eyesight, not that of the man whose blindness has come on gradually.
The first sensation when thus plunged into total darkness is that of unreality, and, just as the light of day dispels the gloom of night, so the sufferer clings to the hope that any minute he may open his eyes, and find things as they were before the darkness settled down, with all its weird shadows, to fill his soul with dread. The continued darkness causes a feeling of depression and repression, very hard to combat, and so the sufferer is in need of "first aid"--in need of a friendly hand and a cheery voice to help him through these trying days. Of this period, M. Brieux, Director of Re-education of the Blinded Soldiers in Paris, says: "The blind are, for the time being, put back into the helpless condition of children. They have to be sustained and given a new education for life. They have to begin many things all over again. Spiritually, they have lost their bearings, and are drifting about in restless anguish. Physically, their whole organism has been shaken by the wound they have received, and must have time after such a violent shock to recover its equilibrium. Their power of judgment has often been temporarily destroyed. They are weak in body and uncertain in mind. This double weakness lays on those who surround them a double duty. Much will have been done when their material welfare has been assured, but the responsibility will not have been discharged unless they have also attained to tranquility of soul and a sense of their own dignity. One must have confidence, in order to give them confidence. Most of us have no idea what powers to meet new demands are inherent in our organs. We have within us capacities unknown even to ourselves, inactive, so long as they are not necessary, awake and efficient, as soon as there is need of them. They are reserves which most of the time we never call on. They are a hoard which we do not touch. Our resources and our power of life are greater than we imagine. The sudden loss of sight gives, after a time, something like the lash of a whip to the whole organism. All the other senses are roused to greater sharpness. When the blind soldier fully realizes this, he will perhaps arrive at a state in which I have seen some men blind from birth, the state of being proud of being blind. Why should they not be proud, when they feel that they are as capable of accomplishing certain things, of practicing certain trades as other men? If, with their lessened powers, lacking the power that we consider of supreme importance, they can do things as well as we, are they not, therefore, cleverer than we? Instead of talking to them of resignation, incite them to revolt at the limitations of their condition. Inspire them to conquer circumstances. Insist that they can. Picture life to them, its beauty and its power, and tell them that it is good."
In administering to the needs of this readjustment period, the volunteer should be an optimist, and should exercise common sense in guiding the adult over the first lap of the unfamiliar road. I have advised the volunteers who are now in France, and those preparing to go there, to take writing boards, games, bright, pithy stories, and a lot of nonsense verse. I have told these Red Cross workers that they themselves must know how to laugh, must be able to rise above the horrors about them, for they are there to serve heroes, not cowards, heroes who will laugh with a sob in their throats; heroes who, after a short respite, will reach for a new sword with which to resume the battle of life. God grant we may have the new swords ready for them--swords of hope, swords of confidence, swords from which all the old prejudice and misconception have been removed--swords of occupation and independence!
Of this readjustment period, Clarence Hawkes, the well-known blind naturalist who lost his eyesight at the age of fifteen, says: "the loss of eyesight seems, for a time, to upset