After all, the truth IS there; it matters little that we should
know it; it is just so and not otherwise, and what we believe or do
not believe about it, will not alter it; and that is a comfort too.
April 24, 1891.
After I had gone upstairs to bed last night, I found I had left a
book downstairs which I was reading, and I went down again to
recover it. I could not find any matches, and had some difficulty
in getting hold of the book; it is humiliating to think how much
one depends on sight.
A whimsical idea struck me. Imagine a creature, highly intellectual,
but without the power of sight, brought up in darkness, receiving
impressions solely by hearing and touch. Suppose him introduced into
a room such as mine, and endeavouring to form an impression of the
kind of creature who inhabited it. Chairs, tables, even a musical
instrument he could interpret; but what would he make of a
writing-table and its apparatus? How would he guess at the use of a
picture? Strangest of all, what would he think of books? He would
find in my room hundreds of curious oblong objects, opening with a
sort of hinge, and containing a series of laminae of paper, which he
would discern by his delicacy of touch to be oddly and obscurely
dinted.
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