The Mind of the Child Part 33

Final Remarks.

To the seven reports upon cases of persons born blind and afterward surgically treated, which are here presented in abridged form from the English originals, may be added some more recent and more accessible ones, one by Hirschberg ("Archiv fur Opthalmologie," xxi, 1. Abth., S.

29 bis 42, 1875), one by A. von Hippel (ibid., xxi, 2. Abth., S. 101), and one by Dufour ("Archives des Sciences physiques et naturelles,"

lviii, No. 242, April, 1877, p. 420). The cases reported here are those most discussed. I have given them considerably in detail in order that the reader may form an independent judgment concerning the behavior of persons born blind and then operated upon, as that behavior is described _before_ the modern physiological controversy over empiricism and nativism. Helmholtz ("Physiologische Optik," -- 28) mentions, besides those of Chesselden and Wardrop and Ware, which he gives in abridged form, some other cases also. Others still may be found in Froriep's "Notizen" (xi, p. 177, 1825, and iv, p. 243, 1837, also xxi, p. 41, 1842), partly reported, partly cited (the latter according to Franz).

In addition to the cases here given of persons born blind and then surgically treated--persons not able to see things in s.p.a.ce-relations before becoming blind--one more case is to be mentioned; it is that of a girl who in her seventh year (probably in consequence of the effect of dazzling sunlight) lost her sight completely, but recovered it again at the age of seventeen years after being treated with electricity. She had to begin absolutely anew to learn to name colors like a child; all measure of distance, perspective, size, had been lost for her _by lack of practice_ (as O. Heyfelder relates in his work "Die Kindheit des Menschen," second edition, Erlangen, 1858, pp. 12-15). He says, p. 12, that the patient had been eight years blind; p. 13, that she had been ten years so. Such cases prove the great influence of experience upon vision in s.p.a.ce, and show how little of this vision is inborn in mankind.

When we compare the acquirement of sight by the normal newly-born child and the infant with that of those born blind, we should, above all, bear in mind that the latter in general could make use of only _one_ eye, and also that on account of the long inactivity of the retina and the absence of the crystalline lens, as well as in consequence of the numerous experiences of touch, essential differences exist. Notwithstanding this, there appears an agreement in the manner in which in both cases vision is learned, the eye is practiced, and the a.s.sociation of sight and touch is acquired. The seventh case in particular shows plainly how strong the a.n.a.logies are.

These cases are sufficient to refute some singular a.s.sertions, e. g., that all the newly-born must see objects reversed, as even a Buffon ("Oeuvres completes," iv, 136; Paris, 1844) thought to be the fact. My boy, when I had him write, in his fifth year, the ordinary figures after a copy that I set for him, imitated the most of them, to my surprise, always in a reversed hand (Spiegelschrift, "mirror-hand"); the 1 and the 4 he continued longest to write thus, though he often made the 4 the other way, too, whereas he always wrote the 5 correctly. This, however, was, of course, not owing to imperfect sight, but to incomplete transformation of the visual idea into the motor idea required for writing. Other boys, as I am given to understand, do the same thing. For myself, I found the distinction between "right" and "left" so difficult in my childhood, that I remember vividly the trouble I had with it.

Singularly enough, Buffon a.s.sumed, in 1749, that the neglect of the double images does not yet take place at the beginning of life.

Johannes Muller, in 1826, expresses the same view. But, inasmuch as in the first two or three weeks after the birth of a human being, in contrast with many animals, nothing at all can as yet be distinctly seen, it is not allowable to maintain that everything must be seen double. Rather is it true that everything is seen neither single nor double, since the very young child perceives, as yet, no forms (boundary-lines) and no distances, but merely receives impressions of light, precisely as is the case with the person born blind, in the period directly after an operation has been performed upon his eyes.

Schopenhauer (in his treatise on "Sight and Colors," first edition, Leipsic, 1816, p. 14) divined this truth. He says, "If a person who was looking out upon a wide and beautiful prospect could be in an instant wholly deprived of his intellect, then nothing of all the view would remain for him except the sensation of a very manifold reaction of his retina, which is, as it were, the raw material out of which his intellect created that view."

The new-born child has, as yet, no intellect, and therefore can not, as yet, at the beginning, see; he can merely have the sensation of light.

This opinion of mine, derived from observation of the behavior of newly-born and of very young infants (cf. the first chapter of this book), seems to me to be practically confirmed in an account given by Anselm von Feuerbach in his work on Kaspar Hauser (Ans.p.a.ch, 1832, p. 77).

"In the year 1828, soon after his arrival in Nuremberg, Kaspar Hauser was to look out at the window in the Vestner Tower, from which there was a view of a broad and many-colored summer landscape. Kaspar Hauser turned away; the sight was repugnant to him. At a later period, long after he had learned to speak, he gave, when questioned, the following explanation:

"'When I looked toward the window it always seemed to me as if a shutter had been put up close before my eyes, and that upon this shutter a colorer had wiped off his brushes of different colors, white, blue, green, yellow, and red, all in motley confusion. Individual things, as I now see them, I could not, at that time, perceive and distinguish upon it; it was absolutely hideous to look upon.'"

By this, as well as by the experiences with persons born blind and afterward surgically treated, it is clearly demonstrated that colors and degrees of brightness are severally apprehended before forms and distances can be perceived. The case must be the same with the normal human child in the first weeks after birth.

After discrimination of the luminous sensations, the boundary-lines of bright plane surfaces are next clearly discerned; then come forms, and, last of all, the distances of these.

With reference to this progress of the normal infant in learning to see, the accounts of persons born blind and afterward surgically treated are again of great value. After the famous question put by Molyneux to Locke, whether an intelligent person, blind from birth, would be able immediately after an operation to distinguish a sphere from a cube by means of the eye alone, had been answered in the negative, the opinion was accepted as satisfactory that such a person learns the distinction only by means of the sense of touch. Thus, the perception of difference would come later, after the sight of different forms, only by means of the tactual memory.

In truth, however, very many forms are discerned as different purely by means of the eye, without the possibility of aid from any other sense.

Phenomena exclusively optical, which, like the rainbow, can not be apprehended by touch or by hearing, are distinctly perceived by the child at a very early period. Without touching, the different forms of objects would be perceived by means of sight alone, and that even by a child unable to touch, through movements of the eyes and head, changes of bodily position, of att.i.tude and posture, and through practice in accommodation and in the observation of differences of brightness.

The fact correctly predicted by Molyneux, that those born blind but afterward surgically treated can not, by means of the eye alone, distinguish the form of a sphere from that of a cube, must accordingly be supplemented to this extent, viz., that such persons are capable, just as are normal children who can see, of learning this difference of form by means of the eye alone without the direct intervention of the sense of touch; for the co-ordination of the retinal excitations in s.p.a.ce and time by means of the intellect, quite independently of all impressions from other departments of sense, is possible, and is in countless cases actual, just as is the learning of differences of form solely by means of the sense of touch in children who are born blind and never learn to see.

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