Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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The functioning of the organs of vision — the sensing eye, the transmitting nervous system and the mind that selects and perceives — is no less variable than the functioning of the organism as a whole, or of any other part of the organism. People with unimpaired eyes and good habits of using them possess, so to speak, a wide margin of visual safety. Even when their seeing organs are functioning badly, they still see well enough for most practical purposes. Consequently they are not so acutely conscious of variations in visual functioning as are those with bad seeing habits and impaired eyes. These last have little or no margin of safety; consequently any diminution in seeing power produces noticeable and often distressing results.
Eyes can be impaired by a number of diseases. Some of these affect only the eye; in others, the impairment of the eye is a symptom of disease in some other part of the body — in the kidneys, for example, or the pancreas, or the tonsils. Many other diseases and many conditions of mild, chronic disorder cause no organic impairment of the eye, but interfere with proper functioning — often, it would seem, by a general lowering of physical and mental vitality.
Faulty diet and improper posture may also affect vision.
Other causes of poor visual functioning are strictly psychological. Grief, anxiety, irritation, fear, and indeed any of the negative emotions may cause a temporary or, if chronic, an enduring condition of mal-functioning.
In the light of these facts, which are matters of everyday experience, we are able to recognize the essential absurdity of the average person’s behaviour, when there is a falling off in the quality of his seeing. Ignoring completely the general condition of his body and his mind, he hurries off to the nearest spectacle shop and there gets himself fitted for a pair of glasses. The fitting is generally done by someone who has never seen him before and who therefore can have no knowledge of him either as a physical organism or as a human individual. Regardless of the possibility that the failure to see properly may be due to temporary malfunctioning caused by some bodily or psychological derangement, the customer gets his artificial lenses and, after a short, sometimes a long, period of more or less acute discomfort, while they are being ‘broken in,’ generally registers an improvement in vision. This improvement, however, is won at a cost. The chances are that he will never be able to dispense with what Dr. Luckiesh calls those ‘valuable crutches,’ but that, on the contrary, the strength of the crutches will have to be increased as his power of seeing progressively diminishes under their influence. This is what happens when things go well. But there is always a minority of cases in which things go badly, and for these the prognosis is thoroughly depressing.
In children, visual functioning is very easily disturbed by emotional shock, worry and strain. But instead of taking steps to get rid of these distressing psychological conditions and to restore proper habits of visual functioning, the parents of a child who reports a difficulty in seeing, immediately hurry him off to have his symptoms palliated by artificial lenses. As light-heartedly as they would buy their little boy a pair of socks or their little girl a pinafore, they have the child fitted with glasses, thus committing him or her to a complete life-time of dependence upon a mechanical device which may neutralize the symptoms of faulty functioning, but only, it would seem, by adding to its causes.
DEFECTIVE EYES CAPABLE OF HAVING FLASHES OF NORMAL VISION
At an early stage in the process of visual re-education one makes a very remarkable discovery. It is this. As soon as the defective organs of vision acquire a certain degree of what I have called dynamic relaxation, flashes of almost or completely normal vision are experienced. In some cases these flashes last only a few seconds; in others, for somewhat longer periods.
Occasionally — but this is rare — the old bad habits of improper use disappear at once and permanently, and with the return to normal functioning there is a complete normalization of the vision. In the great majority of cases, however, the flash goes as suddenly as it came. The old habits of improper use have re-asserted themselves; and there will not be another flash until the eyes and their mind have been coaxed back towards that condition of dynamic relaxation, in which alone perfect seeing is possible. To long-standing sufferers from defective vision, the first flash often comes with such a shock of happy amazement that they cannot refrain from crying out, or even bursting into tears. As the art of dynamic relaxation is more and more completely acquired, as habits of improper use are replaced by better habits, as visual functioning improves, the flashes of better vision become more frequent and of longer duration, until at last they coalesce into a continuous state of normal seeing. To perpetuate the flash — such is the aim and purpose of the educational techniques developed by Dr. Bates and his followers.
The flash of improved vision is an empirical fact which can be demonstrated by anyone who chooses to fulfil the conditions on which it depends. The fact that, during a flash, one may see with extreme clarity objects that, at ordinary times, are blurred or quite invisible, shows that temporary alleviation of mental and muscular strain results in improved functioning and the temporary disappearance of refractive error.
VARIABLE EYES VERSUS INVARIABLE SPECTACLES
Under changing conditions, the defective eye can vary the degree of deformation imposed upon it by habits of improper use. This capacity for variation which may be towards normality or away from it is mechanically diminished or even inhibited altogether by the wearing of artificial lenses. The reason is simple. Every artificial lens is ground to correct a specific error of refraction. This means that an eye cannot see clearly through a lens, unless it is exhibiting exactly that error of refraction which the lens was intended to correct. Any attempt on the part of the spectacled eyes to exercise their natural variability is at once checked, because it always results in poorer vision. And this is true even in cases where the eye varies in the direction of normality; for the eye without errors of refraction cannot see clearly through a lens designed to correct an error it no longer has.
It will thus be seen that the wearing of spectacles confines the eyes to a state of rigid and unvarying structural immobility. In this respect artificial lenses resemble, not the crutches to which Dr. Luckiesh has compared them, but splints, iron braces and plaster casts.
In this context it seems worth while to mention certain recent and revolutionary advances in the treatment of infantile paralysis. These new techniques were developed by the Australian nurse, Sister Elizabeth Kenny, and have been successfully used in her own country and in the United States. Under the old method of treatment the paralysed muscle groups were immobilized by means of splints and plaster casts. Sister Kenny will have nothing to do with these devices. Instead, she makes use, from the first onset of the disease, of a variety of techniques aimed at relaxing and re-educating the affected muscles, some of which are in a spastic condition of over-contraction, while others (incapable of moving owing to the spasm in neighbouring muscle groups) rapidly ‘forget’ how to perform their proper functions. Physiological treatment, such as the application of heat, is combined with an appeal to the patient’s conscious mind, through verbal instruction and demonstration. The results are remarkable. Under the new treatment, the recovery-rate is from seventy-five to one hundred per cent., depending on the site of the paralysis.
Between the Kenny method and the method developed by Dr. Bates there are close and significant analogies. Both protest against the artificial immobilization of sick organs. Both insist on the importance of relaxation. Both affirm that defective functioning can be re-educated towards normality by proper mind-body co-ordination. And, finally, both work.
CHAPTER V
Causes of Visual Mal-Functioning: Disease and Emotional Disturbances
IN THE PRECEDING chapter I spoke of the impairment of visual functioning due, first, to diseases having their seat in the eye itself or elsewhere in the body and, second, to psychological derangements connected with the negative emotions of fear, anger, worry, grief and the like. It goes without
saying that in these cases the restoration of perfect functioning is contingent upon the removal of its physiological and psychological causes of dysfunction. Meanwhile, however, very considerable improvement can almost always be made by the acquisition and practice of the art of seeing.
It can be laid down as a general physiological principle that improvements in the functioning of a part of the body always tend to be followed by organic improvements within that part. In the case of diseases which have their seat in the eye itself, old habits of improper functioning are very often a causative or predisposing factor. Consequently, the acquisition of new and better habits often leads to rapid improvement in the organic condition of the impaired eye.
Even in those cases where the impairment of the eye is only a symptom of a disease having its seat in some other part of the body, the acquisition of habits of proper use will generally produce a certain improvement in the organic condition of the eye.
It is the same with psychological disorders. Perfect functioning can scarcely be expected so long as there is a persistence of the condition of negative emotion which produced the dysfunction. Nevertheless, consistent practice of the art of seeing can do much to improve functioning, even while the undesirable psychological condition persists; and without practice of the art of seeing it will be very difficult, even when the disturbing conditions have passed, to get rid of the habits of improper use contracted while these conditions were present. Moreover, improvement of visual function may react favourably upon the disturbing condition of mind. Most kinds of improper functioning result in nervous tensions. (In the case of long-sighted persons, especially those having a tendency to outward squint, the nervous tension is often extreme, and the victim may be reduced to a condition of almost insane restlessness and agitation.) Such nervous tensions aggravate the disturbing psychological conditions. The intensification of the disturbance increases the dysfunction and so heightens the tensions; the heightened tensions further aggravate the disturbing conditions. And so on, in a vicious circle. But luckily there are also virtuous circles. Improvement of functioning relieves the tensions associated with dysfunction, and this relief of tension acts favourably upon the general conditions. Relief of tension will not, of course, get rid of the disturbing conditions; but it may help to make them progressively more bearable and less harmful in their effects on visual function.
The moral of all this is clear. Where there is reason to believe that improper visual functioning is caused, wholly or in part, by disease or disturbing emotional conditions, take all necessary steps to get rid of these causes; but in the meanwhile learn the art of seeing.
CAUSES OF VISUAL MAL-FUNCTIONING: BOREDOM
Another common impediment to good seeing is boredom, which lowers the general bodily and mental vitality, including that of the organs of vision. From a paper by Joseph E. Barmack, entitled ‘Boredom and Other Factors in the Physiology of Mental Effort’ and published (New York, 1937) in the Archives of Psychology, I select a couple of passages which have a certain relevance to our present subject.
‘Reports of boredom are accompanied very frequently by reports of increased appreciation of such distracting stimuli as pains, aches, eye-strain, hunger.’
The increased appreciation of eye-strain leads to an increased effort to see; and this increased effort, coupled with the increased effort to fix the attention in spite of being bored, results (in a manner which will be explained in the next section) in a lowering of vision and consequent enhanced sense of eye-strain.
In regard to the effect of mental states upon the condition of the body, Mr. Barmack writes as follows:
‘Where there is boredom, the situation seems unpleasant, because one is responding to it with inadequate physiological adjustments, caused in turn by inadequate motivation.’
The converse of this statement is also true. Inadequate physiological adjustments, due to organic or functional defects (in this instance of the organs of seeing), react unfavourably upon motivation by diminishing the individual’s desire to perform a given task, because it is so difficult for him to do it well. This in turn enhances the inadequacy of physiological adaptation, and so on in a vicious circle, boredom increasing functional defect and functional defect increasing boredom. The process is clearly illustrated in children suffering from defective vision. Because the hyperope finds reading uncomfortable, he tends to be bored with close work, and his boredom increases the mal-functioning which makes him long-sighted. Similarly, the myope is handicapped when playing games or associating with people, whose faces he cannot clearly see at more than a short distance; consequently, he is bored with sports and social life, and the boredom reacts unfavourably on his visual defect. An improvement in vision changes the quality of motivation, and reduces the field in which boredom is experienced. Diminished boredom and improved motivation result in improved physiological adjustments and so help forward the improvement of vision.
Once more, the moral is plain. Avoid, if possible, being bored yourself or boring others. But if you can’t help being bored or boring, learn the art of seeing for your own benefit, and teach it to your victims for theirs.
CAUSES OF VISUAL MAL-FUNCTIONING: MISDIRECTED ATTENTION
All the above-mentioned physical and psychological factors making for improper visual functioning are factors that lie, so to speak, outside the process of seeing. We have now to consider an even more fertile source of dysfunction lying within the seeing-process, namely improperly directed attention.
Attention is the indispensable condition of the two mental elements in the total process of seeing; for without attention there can be no selection from the general sense-field and no perception of the selected sensa as the appearances of physical objects.
As with all other psycho-physical activities, there is a right way of directing attention, and there is also a wrong way. When attention is directed in the right way, visual functioning is good; when it is directed in the wrong way, proper functioning is interfered with, and the ability to see falls off.
Much has been written on the subject of attention, and many experiments have been performed with a view to measuring its intensity, its span, its effective duration, its bodily correlations. Only a few of these general considerations and particular facts are relevant to our present subject, and I shall therefore confine myself solely to these.
Attention is essentially a process of discrimination — an act of separating and isolating one particular thing or thought from all the other things in the sense-field and thoughts in the mind. In the total process of seeing, attention is closely associated with selection; indeed, it is almost identical with that activity.
The various kinds and degrees of attention may be classified in a number of different ways. So far as seeing is concerned, the most significant classification is that which divides all acts of attention into the two main classes of spontaneous attention and voluntary attention.
Spontaneous attention is the kind of attention we share with the higher animals — the unforced act of selective awareness which is determined by the biological necessities of keeping alive and reproducing the species, or by the exigencies of our second nature, in other words, of our habits and established patterns of thought, feeling and behaviour. This kind of attention involves no effort when it is shifting and transitory and not much effort when it is prolonged — for spontaneous attention may be prolonged, even in the animals. (The cat lying in wait beside a mouse hole is an obvious example.)
Voluntary attention is, so to speak, the cultivated variety of the wild, spontaneous growth. It is found only in man, and in animals subjected by human beings to some form of training. It is the attention associated with intrinsically difficult tasks, or with tasks which we have to perform, even though we don’t particularly want to. A small boy studying algebra exhibits voluntary attention — that is, if he exhibits any attention at all. The same boy playing a game exhibits spontaneous attention. Voluntary attention is always associated with effort, and tends
more or less rapidly to produce fatigue.
We must now consider the bodily correlations of attention, in so far as these affect the art of seeing. The first and most significant fact is that sensing, selecting and perceiving cannot take place without some degree of bodily movement.
‘Without motor elements,’ writes Ribot, in his classical study, The Psychology of Attention, ‘perception [and it is clear from the context that he includes under this term sensing and selecting as well as perceiving] is impossible. If the eye be kept fixed upon a given object without moving, perception after a while grows dim, and then disappears. Rest the tips of the fingers upon a table without pressing, and the contact at the end of a few minutes will no longer be felt. But a motion of the eye or of the finger, be it ever so slight, will re-arouse perception. Consciousness is only possible through change; change is only possible through movement. It would be easy to expatiate at great length upon this subject; for although the facts are very manifest and of common experience, psychology has nevertheless so neglected the role sustained by movements, that it actually forgot at last that they are the fundamental condition of cognition in that they are the instrument of the fundamental law of consciousness, which is relativity, change. Enough has now been said to warrant the unconditional statement that, where there is no movement, there is no perception.’
It is more than fifty years since Ribot enunciated this important truth about the connection between movement and perception. In theory, everyone now agrees that Ribot was right; and yet orthodox ophthalmologists have made no effort to discover how this principle could be applied in practice, so as to improve visual functioning. That task was left to Dr. Bates, in whose system the fundamental importance of movement as an aid to seeing is continually stressed.