Didymus the Blind

“ The sound of her voice was hushed, all the impressions of that happy evening had grown dim, and behold a void was in their place, to fill which void there rose from the depths of the blind man’s soul a yearning desire. He longed to see her. The sudden shock that had roused that evenly balanced youthful nature from its brief slumber had likewise awakened the fatal element that contained within itself the germs of irrepressible suffering. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Home, girl!'
'I know thee,' said Nydia, in a low voice, 'thou art Arbaces the Egyptian': then, as if inspired by some sudden impulse, she flung herself at his feet, and clasping his knees, exclaimed, in a wild and passionate tone, 'Oh dread and potent man! save him—save him! He is not guilty—it is I! He lies within, ill-dying, and I—I am the hateful cause! And they will not admit me to him—they spurn the blind girl from the hall. Oh, heal him! thou knowest some herb—some spell—some countercharm, for it is a potion that hath wrought this frenzy! ”

“ But when the globe, growing larger and larger as it drew near the earth, became veiled by a heavy red mist and finally disappeared below the horizon line, the face of the blind man would soften and grow calm, and he would rise and go to his room. ”

“ The help that our senses lend to one another, is an obstacle to their perfection.
The blind man said he should have been tempted to regard persons endowed with sight as superior intelligences, if he had not found out a hundred times how inferior we are in other respects. How do we know—Diderot reflects upon this—that all the animals do not reason in the same way, and look upon themselves as our equals or superiors, notwithstanding our more complex and efficient intelligence? ”

“ Meanwhile Nydia, when separated by the throng from Glaucus and Ione, had in vain endeavored to regain them. In vain she raised that plaintive cry so peculiar to the blind; it was lost amidst a thousand shrieks of more selfish terror. Again and again she returned to the spot where they had been divided—to find her companions gone, to seize every fugitive—to inquire of Glaucus—to be dashed aside in the impatience of distraction. Who in that hour spared one thought to his neighbor? Perhaps in scenes of universal horror, nothing is more horrid than the unnatural selfishness they engender. ”

“ Sometimes during the heat of noonday, when all around was quiet, when human life seemed at a standstill, and Nature had lapsed into that peculiar repose beneath which the noiseless current of life is felt rather than seen, the face of the blind boy likewise assumed an expression peculiar to himself. He seemed like one absorbed in listening to sounds inaudible to all the world beside,—sounds issuing [46] from the depths of his own soul, impelled to utterance by the universal calm. ”

“ And who is that sweet-faced girl in the pew just in front of the pulpit? She is beautiful. She looks like Nydia, the blind girl in 'The Last Days of Pompeii,' but she can't be Nydia, for Nydia lived and died hundreds of years ago. But she listens to the music just as Nydia might do if she were here now. It is not so sad to be blind in a world of music. And yet—how would I know where they were sitting if I were blind, too? ”

“ Such persons therefore insist upon sharing even involuntary and accidental shortcomings. When toadying an invalid, they pretend to suffer with the same complaint. In company with a person who is somewhat blind or deaf, they pretend to be dim-sighted and hard of hearing, like the flatterers of Dionysius, whose sight was so dull that they stumbled against each other and knocked over the dishes at dinner. ”

“ Even the free-thinkers during the forties and fifties of the present century were not free from superstitious ideas regarding the “mysterious designs of Nature.” Therefore it was not surprising that with the gradual development of the child, who showed unusual gifts, Uncle Maxim should have arrived at the firm conviction that his very blindness was only one of the manifestations of those mysterious designs. “One unfortunate for another,”—this was the motto which Uncle Maxim had already inscribed on his pupil’s standard. ”

“ Each hurried blindly and confusedly on. Nothing in all the various and complicated machinery of social life was left save the primal law of self-preservation.
Through this awful scene did Glaucus wade his way, accompanied by Ione and the blind girl. Suddenly, a rush of hundreds, in their path to the sea, swept by them. Nydia was torn from the side of Glaucus, who with Ione was borne rapidly onward; and when the crowd (whose forms they saw not, so thick was the gloom) were gone, Nydia was still separated from their side. Glaucus shouted her name. ”

“ By nature the blind boy was a very lively and active child; but as month succeeded month, blindness set its impress on the boy’s temperament, which began to manifest its true character. He gradually lost his rapidity of motion. He would sit perfectly still for hours in some remote corner, with unchanging expression, as if listening. When at times the various sounds that usually distracted his attention ceased, and the room became quiet, the child would sit absorbed in thought, and upon his beautiful face, serious beyond his years, an expression of bewilderment and surprise would appear. ”

“ Basil Santoine, as Eaton knew, slept above; a nurse must be waiting on duty somewhere near. Eaton had seen the row of buttons which the blind man had within arm's-length with which he must be able to summon every servant in the house. ”

“ A blind man stumbles, groping past; He cannot see their scarlet shine; And yet some memory seems to twine About his soul. For, oh, he turns As trusting as a child who yearns For some vague dream, and smilingly He lifts the eyes that cannot see.... A blind man stumbles, groping past. The window box across the street Is filled with scarlet flowers; They tell a secret, tender, sweet, Through all the dreary hours. And folk who hurry on their way Dream of some other brighter day.... ”

“ Enter an old Blind Man, feeling his way with a staff; he goes to the opposite side, when he knocks.
Blind Man. Poor blind man, Mr. Punch; I hope you’ll bestow your charity; I hear that you are very good and kind to the poor, Mr. Punch; pray have pity upon me, and may you never know the loss of your tender eyes! (listens, putting his ear to the side, and hearing nobody coming knocks again) I lost my sight by the sands in Egypt; poor blind man. Pray, Mr. Punch, have compassion upon the poor stone blind. (coughs, and spits over the side) Only a halfpenny to buy something for my bad cough. ”

“ He is willing and eager to work, and should be given the chance. A French physician, himself without eyesight, said: "So long as the blind can still bring their stone, however small it may be, to the building of civilization, or of bringing happiness to their kind, they feel that they live; and whatever be the wounds received, they are not out of the battle of life—the inequality of arms only increases their ardor." ”

“ The blind man, his pulse beating tumultuously, put his hand through the case and felt the panel behind. That was slid back exposing the safe; and the door of the safe stood open. Santoine's hands felt within the safe swiftly. The safe was empty.
He recoiled from it, choking back an ejaculation. The entry to this room had been made for the purpose which he supposed; and the thieves must have succeeded in their errand. The blind man, in his uselessness for pursuit, could delay calling others to act for him no longer. ”

“ He looked down the road. "There's another car coming," he announced. "Two cars!"
The double glare from the headlights of a motor shone through the tree-trunks as the car topped and came swiftly down a rise three quarters of a mile away and around the last turn back on the road; another pair of blinding lights followed. There was no doubt that this must be the pursuit from Santoine's house. Eaton stood beside Harriet, who had stayed in the driving-seat of the car.
"You know Dibley well, Harriet?" he asked.
"He's worked on our place. He's dependable," she answered. ”

“ If you could only see the effect you produce on others by your playing!”
The blind man started and drew himself erect. No one but the mother noticed this little interlude. Her face flushed as deeply as if she had just received the first kiss of a new-born and passionate love.
The blind man still remained on the same spot, and his face had not yet lost its pallor. Overwhelmed as he was by the impressions of his new happiness, he may also have felt the approach of the storm that like a dark and shapeless cloud was rising out of the depths of his brain. ”

“ Mad exultation had seized Eaton to know that he had seriously wounded his adversary. He knew now that the man could not have got out of the car by himself—he was too badly wounded for that; he had been taken out of the car, and the other men who were missing had him in charge. The three men who had gone on in the machine had done so for their own escape, but with the added object of misleading the pursuit; the water they had got at Dibley's had been to wash the blood from the car. ”

“ Yet the blind boy enjoyed moments of quiet satisfaction, even of childish delight, which came to him whenever he received a keen sensation from certain outward impressions, revealing unfamiliar manifestations of the unseen world. Nature in all her grandeur and power was not wholly inaccessible to him. Once, for instance, when he was led to a high cliff above the river, he listened with a peculiar expression to the far-away splashing of the water below, and when he heard the stones slipping from beneath his feet he seized his mother’s dress and held his breath in fear. ”

“ And the eldest of the blind men explained to him life and philosophy and religion, how that the world (meaning their valley) had been first an empty hollow in the rocks, and then had come, first, inanimate things without the gift of touch, and llamas and a few other creatures that had little sense, and then men, and at last angels, whom one could hear singing and making fluttering sounds, but whom no one could touch at all, which puzzled Nunez greatly until he thought of the birds. ”

“ The whole fabric of his mind, fashioned after the ancestral model, had reserved within itself a substratum of the impressions of light, the product of the countless experiences of his ancestors. Thus in his inner organization the blind man is like another possessing eyesight, but with eyes forever closed, [135] Hence a dim yet ever present consciousness of desire that craves contentment; an undefined yearning to exercise the dormant powers of his soul which have never been called into action. ”

“ Now, too, no more stains appeared on the brown leaves where they had passed; their burden no longer bled. Eaton, realizing what this meant, felt neither exultation nor surprise. He had known that the man they carried, though evidently alive when taken from the car, was dying. But now he watched the tracks more closely even than before, looking for them to show him where the men had got rid of their burden.
It had grown easier to follow the tracks with the increase of the light, but the danger that he would be seen had also grown greater. He was obliged to keep to the hollows ”

“ Those alternatives alone occurred to the blind man; the number of shots fired within the confines of the room below precluded any other explanation. He did not imagine the fact that the battle had been fought in the dark; himself perpetually in the dark, he thought of others always in the light.
The blind man stood barefooted on the floor, his hands clasping in one of the bitterest moments of his rebellion against, and defiance of, his helplessness of blindness. Below him—as he believed—his servants had been sacrificing life for him ”

“ To prepare the born-blind to answer philosophical interrogatories truly, and then to put these interrogatories rightly, would have been a feat, he declares, not unworthy of the united talents of Newton, Descartes, Locke, and Leibnitz. Unless the patient were placed in such conditions as this, Diderot thinks there would be more profit in questioning a blind person of good sense, than in the answers of an uneducated person receiving sight for the first time under abnormal and bewildering circumstances. ”

“ In concluding our account of this piece, we may mention that Diderot threw out a hint, which is a good illustration of the alert and practically helpful way in which his mind was always seeking new ideas. We have common signs, he said, appealing to the eye, namely, written characters, and others appealing to the ear, namely, articulate sounds; we have none appealing to touch. "For want of such a language, communication is entirely broken between us and those who are born deaf, dumb, and blind. They grow, but they remain in a state of imbecility. ”