INTELLECTUAL WORK OF THE BLIND—VILLEY. 699 
them read aloud to me. The practice which T had had, as already 
remarked, made this method of work so familiar to me that for 
works which are not of an artistic character, I prefer reading aloud 
to reading by touch. 
However, as regards inquiries of this kind, I will not endeavor to 
deny that they present real difficulties. In the first place, and be- 
fore all else, the impossibility of running over the matter is the 
great drawback to being read to aloud. The eye is quick to scruti- 
nize a page, eliminate the whole of a useless chapter, and make sure 
that it contains nothing of any interest. Nothing can replace the 
eye for this purpose. It is necessary to resolve to listen carefully to 
useless developments for fear of imprudently skipping over an im- 
portant idea. When I risked skipping passages, it was necessary 
that they should be short. It was necessary, indeed, to know all 
the different directions which the argument took.~ When one direc- 
tion was sterile it could be abandoned, but it was important not to 
pass the exact point where the thought entered on a new path. 
Sometimes I employed a signal (a stroke of a ruler on the table, for 
example) for interrupting an introductory sentence, and it was 
understood that my reader was to begin further along, according to 
the character of the book, either at the beginning of the following 
sentence or at the next line, or five or six lines below. But these 
expedients were only moderately successful and had to be used very 
conservatively. Another difficulty is that borrowed eyes have never 
the docility of those which are under the direction of one’s own 
will. A secretary, however devoted, grows weary of an extremely 
monotonous task, the interest of which escapes him. I do not at- 
tempt, therefore, to minimize the difficulties which a blind person 
encounters in such work. Taking all in all, however, they are 
difficulties only and not insurmountable obstacles. To succeed, it is 
necessary to have a little more patience, a little more perseverance, 
that is all. 
Chronological researches can be made in the same way, and when 
the investigations of sources and chronology were completed, nothing 
remained to be done except to concentrate the results, assemble and 
condense them, and to make clear by their hight the evolution of 
Montaigne’s thought. This was merely a matter of reflection, the 
most agreeable task of all, because it was carried on without the use 
of books or any extraneous aid, and because it was all mental and 
depended on myself alone. ; 
For the easy maturing of this reflection my memoranda in “ braille 
were both necessary and sufficient. I have already shown how easy 
their handling was to me. I believe that in this regard the blind 
man does not suffer from any inferiority, and the more he exercises 
his faculty of concentration the easier his task becomes. 
” 
