Blindfold

“ 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. ”

“ XV. — AGAIN THE NERVINA
It was at this point that I began taking notes. There is something psychological to the Blind Spot, weird and touching on the spirit. I know not what it is; but I can feel it. It impinges on to life. I can sense the ecstasy of horror. I am not afraid. Whatever it is that is dragging me down, it is not evil. My sensations are not normal.
For the benefit of my successor, if there is to be one, I have made an elaborate detail of notes and comments. After all, the whole thing, when brought down to the end, must fall to the function of science. ”

“ A bandage is passed over the eyes, lest in the first tenderness of the recovered sense, it should be fatally affected by the sudden transition from darkness to light. But between the awful blank of total privation of vision, and the temporary blank of vision merely veiled, there lies the widest difference. In the moment of their restoration, the blind have had one glimpse of light, flashing on them in an overpowering gleam of brightness, which the thickest, closest veiling cannot extinguish. The new darkness is not like the void darkness of old ”

“ First, adaptation of vision to a dark room, like those used for flyers during the war. Then the drops of black liquid that the professor had invented, slowly spreading over the eyes, subtly altering the rods and cones of the retina, the nerve endings sensitive to light.
And I began to live in a gradually fading world. Have you ever wondered what it's like to go blind? The increasing dusk and darkness around the edges of your vision, the little errors and mistakes that begin to crop up in everyday life. ”

“ The air was vibrant, magnetic. There was no Watson. But we could hear his voice. Dim and fearful, coming down the corridors of time.
“Hold that ring, Harry! Hold that ring!” Then the faint despair out of the weary distance, faint, but a whole volume:
“The Blind Spot!”
It was over as quickly as that. The whole thing climaxed into an instant. It is difficult to describe. One cannot always analyse sensations. Mine, I am afraid, were muddled. A thousand insistent thoughts clashed through my brain. Horror, wonder, doubt! I have only one persistent and predominating recollection. The old lady! ”

“ The doctor stepped forward, hand extended, smiling; surely he did not look or act like a prisoner.
“Well, well,” spoke he; “at last! Chick Watson and Harry Wendel! You’re very welcome. Was it a long journey?”
His eyes twinkled in the old way. He didn’t wait for their replies. He went on:
“Have we solved the Blind Spot? It seems that my pupils never desert me. Let me ask: have you solved the Blind Spot?”
“We’ve solved nothing, professor. What we have come for is, first, yourself; and second, for the secrets you have found. It is for us to ask--what is the Blind Spot?” ”

“ What you have no idea of you cannot miss; and their not definitely missing this great region out of their sight seems due to the fact that their very idea and memory of it is lost along with the sensation. A man blind of his eyes merely, sees darkness. A man blind of his visual brain-centres can no more see darkness out of the parts of his retina which are connected with the brain-lesion than he can see it out of the skin of his back. He cannot see at all in that part of the field ”

“ That, as everyone knows, is the classical way of beginning the game of Blind Man’s Buff; and supposing that the blinded man pro tem, is properly bandaged, and cannot get a squint of light up by the side of his nose, and also supposing that he confuses himself by turning round the proper number of times honestly, he will be in profound darkness, and in utter ignorance of the direction of door, window, or the salient objects in the room. ”

“ She listened intelligently to what I said.
“The Blind Spot”--speaking with the utmost care--“is the name we have given to a certain mystery. It is always marked by the sound you have just heard; that bell always rings when the phenomenon is at an end.”
“And--the--phenomenon,” uttering the word with difficulty, “what is that?”
“You,” I returned. “Up till now three human beings have disappeared into what we call the Blind Spot. You are the first to be seen coming out of it.”
“Hobart,” interrupted Charlotte, coming to my side. “Let me.” ”

“ I have studied the expression of the eye in those born blind. These poor people, who could not even see dim shadows of objects, nor distinguish night from day, as though a sevenfold bandage covered their eyes, used to play instruments and be happy together, nor would anyone have thought that in them the eye was dead, insensible for ever to light; but it was only its movements which gave it an expression of joy and amiability, which inspired confidence and tenderness. ”

“ Few the souls escaping, and God have mercy upon those who stumble through the blinding darkness, made more torturingly hideous by the intermittent flashes of lurid light. And yet there come three, whom the darkness seems not to deter, nor obstacles impede. Only a blind person, accustomed to constant darkness, and familiarized with these streets could walk that way. ”

“ Something concrete for our senses. If the occult is, it can certainly be proven. The professor was right. It is energy, force, vibration. It has a law. The old doctor was caught somehow. We must watch our step and see that we aren't swallowed up also. Perhaps we shall go the way of Watson.”
I shuddered.
“I hope not. But explain. You speak in volumes. Come back to earth.”
“That's easy, Harry. I can give you my theory in a few short words. You've studied physiology, haven't you? Well, that's where you can get your proof—or rather let me say my theory. What is the Blind Spot?” ”

“ Blindness wraps the outer world about with a dark veil, which likewise envelops the brain, entangling and impeding its processes; and yet by the aid of inherited conceptions and impressions gained from other sources, the brain creates in this darkness a world of its own, sad, gloomy, and sombre, but not devoid of a vague poetry peculiar to itself. ”

“ He had slept the clock round, and just before ten struck, he made his way to the street. He heard Big Ben boom the hour, and waited for light. But no light came. Another hour passed, and yet another, and his soul was seized with blind panic. Suppose sight never returned, suppose his experiments were altogether wrong, and that what happened in the case of the rabbits did not happen to man! Suppose the blindness was permanent! ”

“ The eye of the sun itself is blind; and for ever, while it dazzles us with its light, blind it must remain. Nay, what need has it for sight at all, if in blindness it be able to fulfil its mission? And yet implicit within its vast energies, there lies the gift of sight. ”

“ Sometimes in the late evening one walks busily up and down the ward doing this and that, forgetting that there is anything beyond [Pg 46] the drawn blinds, engrossed in the patients, one's tasks—bed-making, washing, one errand and another—and then suddenly a blind will blow out and almost up to the ceiling, and through it you will catch a glimpse that makes you gasp, of a black night crossed with bladed searchlights, of a moon behind a crooked tree.
The lifting of the blind is a miracle; I do not believe in the wind. ”

“ With some practice, one can make anything, not too large, disappear in the blind spot. Boys in college, when they are studying about the eye, sometimes amuse themselves in church by getting the clergyman on the blind spot, and so blotting him out. It really is queer enough. You cover one eye, and look with the other at the wall behind the preacher a little toward the side on which your own nose is. When you get just the right point to look at, the man simply disappears. ”

“ Everybody knows what the blind spot is, and every psychology and physiology text-book talks about it. But as a rule it is identified only with the little point and the tiny cross pictured in the text-books, and it is supposed that it does not much matter if the little cross, under certain circumstances, can not be seen. But it must not be forgotten that the size of the blind spot increases with the distance so that at a fairly great distance, possibly half the length of a room, the blind spot becomes so great that a man’s head may disappear from the field of vision. ”

“ Your eye is merely a machine. It catches certain colours. Which in turn are merely rates of vibration. There is nothing to matter but force, Harry; if we could get down deep enough and know a few laws, we could transmute it.”
“What has it to do with the occult?”
“Merely a fact. The eye machine catches only certain vibration speeds of energy. There are undoubtedly any number of speeds; the eye cannot see them.”
“Then this would account for the Blind Spot?”
“Exactly. A localised spot, a condition, a combination of phenomena, anything entering it becomes invisible.” ”

“ Bishop Berkeley came near and he has been followed by others; but they all have been deceived by their own sophistry. However, except for the grossest materialists, all thinkers take cognizance of a hereafter.
“No one dreamed of a Blind Spot and what it may lead to, what it might contain. We are five-sensed; we interpret the universe by the measure of five yardsticks. Yet, the Blind Spot takes even those away; the more we know, it seems, the less certain we are of ourselves. As I said to Mme. Le Fabre, it is a difficult question to determine, after all, just who are the ghosts. ”

“ The blindness in the eyes is so complete and set in such a full array that it acts at first on one almost like a kind of vision. The eyes hold themselves like pictures of eyes, like little walls, as if real eyes were in behind them. One wonders if there is any one who could ever manage to break through them, fleck up little ordinary human things—personality, for instance, atmosphere, or light—against them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We are so accustomed to merely play with children, that we are easily blinded to the full seriousness of such requests.
We cannot break off these reflections on the image of the retina without making mention of a remarkable spot in the background of the eye—the yellow spot marking the entrance of the optic nerve. All perception whatever is arrested within the bounds of this spot—it is a blind point in our field of view. ”

“ Just as we say of him who puts out the light at night that he has produced darkness, so we say of him who destroyed the sight of any being that he produced blindness, although darkness and blindness are negative properties, and require no agent. ”

“ The various forms of systematic blindness present similar phenomena. We have the case of a man suffering from complete hysterical blindness. In the course of the treatment he recovers his sight, but at first, and for some long time, only partially: he could see everything with one exception—people’s heads. He saw all the people around him without heads. Thus he saw—yet did not see. From a large number of like experiences it has long been concluded that it is only the patient’s consciousness which does not see, does not hear, but the sense-function has nothing at all the matter with it. ”

“ Blindness is a very general characteristic [Pg 129] of creatures which dwell in darkness. There are all stages between total blindness and weak eyes. Now, do these blind creatures live in darkness because they are blind, or have they become first weak-eyed and then blind because of the continuous disuse of their eyes? ”

“ In blindness, it has been noticed how keen the sense of touch becomes. I have also noticed the keen sensitiveness of facial perception enjoyed by some of the blind, by which they are enabled to perceive objects in the absence of physical sight. In the mesmeric state we see a somewhat analogous mental condition. As the peculiar sense of the blind is developed by extra concentration of the mind in the direction of facial perception, so is “the sixth sense” developed by concentration of direction, as well as by the condition of sensitiveness induced by the mesmeric state. ”

“ Of twenty persons who became blind after their seventh year all have "dream-vision"—as I shall term the faculty of seeing in dreams. The period from the fifth to the seventh year is thus indicated as the critical one. Before this age the visual centre is undergoing its elementary education; its life is closely dependent upon the constant food-supply of sensations; and when these are cut off by blindness, it degenerates and decays. If blindness occurs between the fifth and the seventh years, the preservation of the visualizing power depends on the degree of development of the individual. ”

“ My pen is weak. I am weary. I am waiting for Hobart. Perhaps I shall not last. When he comes I want him to know my story. What he knows already will not hurt repeating. It is well that man shall have it; it may be that we shall both fail-there is no telling; but if we do the world can profit by our blunders and guide itself--perhaps to the mastery of the phenomenon that controls the Blind Spot.
I ask you to bear with me. If I make a few mistakes or I am a bit loose, remember the stress under which I am writing. I shall try to be plain so that all may follow.
VI
CHICK WATSON ”