March 19, 1886.] 



SCIENCE. 



271 



THE SENSE OF TOUCH, AND THE TEACH- 

 ING OF THE BLIND. 



The sense of touch is one of the most complex 

 which we possess, and one not well understood. 

 Recent physiological studies have shown its inde- 

 pendence of others that have long been associated 

 with it. The senses of heat, cold, pain, and touch, 

 bear intimate relations, but nevertheless are dis- 

 tinct ; and a more perfect knowledge of their 

 different phases must lead to a better understand- 

 ing of many peculiarities among the blind. 



Professor Soret, says the Spectator, taking up 

 the psychological branch of the subject, has tried 

 to find out how far the sense of touch may be 

 made to convey to the sightless an idea of the 

 beautiful : for as a deaf musician may enjoy 

 music despite his deafness, so may a blind man 

 find pleasure in beauty of form notwithstanding 

 his blindness. In the one case, the pleasure comes 

 from the rhythm, or rather from sonorous vibra- 

 tions in the air, produced by the playing ; in the 

 other, from the symmetry and regularity of the 

 object handled. " When music is going on, I 

 feel something here," said to M. Soret a deaf-mute 

 who enjoyed operas, putting his hand on his 

 stomach. The blind, even those born blind, as 

 Professor Soret has ascertained by inquiries 

 among the inmates of the blind-asylum of Lau- 

 sanne, have the same love of symmetry as the 

 deaf. The girl-embroiderers attach much impor- 

 tance to the perfect regularity of the designs 

 which they are required to repeat in their work. 

 The basket-makers insist on the willow withes 

 they use being all straight and of the same length. 

 Imperfections in the things they handle are, to 

 the blind, indications of ugliness. They like 

 evenness of surface, and regularity of shape : a 

 cracked pot, a rough table, or a broken chair 

 causes them positive discomfort. 



But to create in the mind of a person born 

 blind an artistic idea, involves a measure of 

 psychological development which it is very diffi- 

 cult to impart, and requires from both teacher 

 and scholar great patience and long-sustained 

 effort. The imagination, — the faculty of repre- 

 sentation, as it has been called, — though partly 

 inborn, is much more the result of a long series of 

 automatic experiments in which all the senses 

 co-operate, mutually controlling and correcting 

 each other. This faculty is naturally less devel- 

 oped with the sightless than the seeing. If even 

 many educated people, who from their youth 

 upwards have been reading books and seeing pic- 

 tures, find it hard to realize to themselves scenes 

 they have never beheld, how much harder must it 

 be for the blind to identify this or that outline 



with beauty, or the reverse ! At the sight of a 

 picture or a design, we straightway and without 

 effort represent to ourselves the object delineated 

 in all its three dimensions. It never occurs to us 

 to think that the horse, or the man, or the moun- 

 tain, is nothing more than a combination of colors 

 laid on a flat piece of canvas. The mere feeling 

 of a picture, albeit in relief, cannot convey the 

 same impression as an ordinary painting ; for, to 

 the blind, perspective and foreshortening must 

 be mysteries so profound as to be hardly capa- 

 ble of comprehension. Nevertheless the difficulty 

 is not insurmountable. Professor Soret mentions 

 the case of a blind rustic, accustomed to horses, 

 who, without help, succeeded in selecting from 

 a number of other designs, in relief, the figure 

 of the animal with wilich he was most familiar. 

 A youth of quick apprehension, and vivid though 

 undeveloped imaginative power, he had handled 

 horses in his father's or his master's stable until 

 he had mentally created an ideal horse so like the 

 original, that he was able to recognize by his 

 fingers its counterfeit presentment. Another 

 boy, born blind, but thoroughly educated, was 

 able to pick out a bird ; yet he admitted, that, un- 

 less he had previously handled a stuffed specimen, 

 he would have had great difficulty in identifying 

 the figure, and realizing what the original was 

 like. In other words, mere description is not 

 enough : a blind man cannot mentally see a thing, 

 or even recognize it when laid in a touchable form 

 before him, unless he has first familiarized him- 

 self, by actual experience, with its outward shape. 



It would thus seem that the faculty we call 

 ' imagination ' depends nearly altogether on the 

 sense of sight. If we have seen a hill, we may 

 have an idea of what a mountain is like ; by see- 

 ing a lake, we get a notion of the sea : but, if we 

 never saw either a tree or the picture of one, not 

 all the word-painting that was ever penned would 

 convey any true or adequate idea of an ordinary 

 wood, much less of the wondrous beauty and 

 bewildering grandeur of a tropical forest. We 

 should be so far blind ; and the blind can image 

 to themselves only that which they can feel with 

 their hands. All the same, thanks to their innate 

 love of rhythm and regularity, they can be taught, 

 through the sense of touch, to appreciate shapeli- 

 ness, to find an aesthetic pleasure in sculptures, 

 in certain of the decorative arts, and in raised 

 pictures. They may even learn not only to recog- 

 nize their friends by feeling their features, but to 

 single out a pretty woman and a handsome man. 

 As to this, Professor Soret relates an amusing and 

 suggestive anecdote. Some time ago, three pro- 

 fessors made a visit to the Lausanne asylum. 

 One was a stalwart and handsome Swede, with a 



