Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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And now, having learnt the means whereby central fixation may be rendered habitual and automatic, let us take the last step in this long series of exercises, and make ourselves fully conscious of the fact that we see best only a small part of what we are looking at. For many of those who have undertaken the exercises, there will be no need to take this step, for the good reason that they have already acquired that awareness. It is hard to look at things analytically, or to practise the small-scale swinging shift, without discovering the fact of central fixation.
Those who have not yet observed the phenomenon may now, without any serious risk of strain or effort, take the following steps to convince themselves of its regular occurrence. Hold up the forefingers of either hand about two feet from the face and about eighteen inches apart. Look first at the right forefinger. It will be seen more distinctly than the left, which appears at the extreme edge of the field of vision. Now turn the head and pay attention to the left finger, which will at once be seen more clearly than the right. Now bring the fingers closer together. Look from one to the other when they are a foot apart, then six inches, then three inches, then one inch, then when they are actually touching. In all cases, the finger regarded by the eyes and attended to by the mind, will be seen more distinctly than the other.
Repeat the same process on a letter — say a large E from a frontpage newspaper headline. Pay attention first to the top bar of the E, and notice that it seems clearer and blacker than the other two bars. Then shift attention to the bottom bar, and note how that is now the clearest of the three. Do the same with the middle bar. Next pick out a smaller E from some less strident headline and repeat the process. You will find, if the eyes and mind have lost their old bad habit of staring, that even in the smaller letter there is a perceptible difference in distinctness between the bar which is actually being attended to and the bars which are not being attended to. As time goes on, it will be possible to observe differences in distinctness between the upper and lower part even of a small twelve-point or eight-point letter. The more perfect the sight, the smaller the area which can be seen with maximum distinctness.
To confirm the fact of central fixation, one may reverse the process described above and do one’s best to see every part of a large letter, or every feature of a friend’s face, equally clearly at the same time. The result will be an almost immediate sense of strain and a lowering of vision. One cannot with impunity attempt to do the physically and psychologically impossible. But that, precisely, is what the person with defective sight is perpetually doing when he peers with such an anxious intentness at the world around him. Once you have convinced yourself experimentally of this fact, and of the other, complementary fact that good vision comes only when the eyes and mind make innumerable successive acts of central fixation, you will never again be tempted to stare, to strain, to try hard to see. Vision is not won by making an effort to get it; it comes to those who have learnt to put their minds and eyes into a state of alert passivity, of dynamic relaxation.
CHAPTER XIII The Mental Side of Seeing
THE eyes provide us with the visual sense impressions, which are the raw materials of sight. The mind takes these raw materials and works them up into the finished product — normal vision of external objects.
When sight is sub-normal, the defect may be due to causes belonging to one or other of two main categories, physical and mental. The eyes, or the nervous system connected with them, may suffer accidental injury, or be affected by disease — in which case the supply of the raw materials of vision will be cut off at the source. Alternatively, the efficiency of the mind, as the interpreter of crude sensa, may be impaired, owing to any one of a great number of possible psychological maladjustments. When this happens, the efficiency of the eye as a sensing-apparatus is also impaired; for the human mind-body is a single unit, and psychological mal-functioning is reflected in physiological mal-functioning. With the impairment of the physiological functioning of the eye, the quality of the raw materials, which it furnishes, falls off; and this in turn increases the inefficiency of the mind as a worker-up of such materials.
Orthodox ophthalmologists are content to palliate the symptoms of poor sight by means of ‘those valuable crutches,’ artificial lenses. They work only on the sensing eye and ignore completely the selecting, perceiving and seeing mind. It is a case of Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. Obviously and on the face of it, any rational, any genuinely aetiological treatment of defective vision must take account of the mental side of seeing. In the method of visual re-education developed by Dr. W. H. Bates and his followers, due attention is paid, not merely to the provider of raw materials, but also to the producer of the finished article.
Of the psychological factors which prevent the mind from doing a good job of interpretation, some are closely related to the process of perceiving and seeing, while others are not. In the latter category we must place all those negative emotions which are so fruitful a source of mal-functioning and, finally, of organic disease in every part of the body, including the eyes. To the former belong certain negative emotions specifically related to the act of seeing, and certain mal-functionings of the memory and imagination — mal-functionings which lower the mind’s efficiency as an interpreter of sensa.
To treat of the methods by which negative emotions may be avoided or dispelled is beyond the scope of this little book. I can only repeat in different words what was said in the opening section. When the conscious T’ is afflicted to excess by such emotions as fear, anger, worry, grief, envy, ambition, the mind and body are likely to suffer. One of the important psychophysical functions most commonly impaired is that of vision. Negative emotions impair vision, partly through direct action upon the nervous, glandular and circulatory systems, partly by lowering the efficiency of the mind. It is literally true that people become ‘blind with rage’; that fear may make the world ‘go black’ or ‘swim before the eyes’; that worry can be so ‘numbing’ that people cease to be able to see or hear properly, and are therefore frequently involved in serious accidents. Nor are the effects of such negative emotions merely transient and temporary. If they are intense enough and sufficiently protracted, negative feelings such as worry, disappointed love and competitiveness, can produce in their victims serious organic derangements — for example, gastric ulcer, tuberculosis and coronary disease. They can also produce lasting mal-functioning of the seeing organs, mental and physical — mal-functioning that manifests itself in mental strain, nervous muscular tension and errors of refraction. Anybody who wants normal vision should therefore do everything possible to avoid or get rid of these pernicious negative emotions, and in the meanwhile should learn the art of seeing, by means of which the disastrous effects of such emotions upon the eyes and mind can be completely or partially undone.
This seems to be all that can be usefully said, in this place at any rate, about those mental obstacles to normal vision which are not immediately connected with the act of seeing. For a full discussion of negative emotions, and for methods of dealing with them, one must turn to the psychiatrists, the moralists and the writers on ascetical and mystical religion. In a brief introduction to the art of seeing, I can only mention the problem, and pass on.
We have now to consider those mental obstacles to normal vision which are intimately bound up with the actual seeing process. Certain negative emotions, habitually associated with the act of seeing by people with sub-normal vision, have already been discussed. Thus, I have described the fear of light, and the means by which that fear may be cast out. I have also mentioned that greed for vision, that over-anxiety to see too much too well, which results in misdirection of attention and in mental and physical staring; and I have dwelt at great length on the procedures, by means of which these bad habits may be changed, and the undesirable emotions, responsible for them, dispelled.
We have now to consider another fear, intimately connected, in the minds of those suffering from defective vision, with the act of seeing, and resp
onsible in some degree for the perpetuation of visual mal-functioning. I refer to the fear of not seeing properly.
Let us trace the genealogy of this fear. The art of seeing in a normal and natural way is acquired unconsciously during infancy and childhood. Then, owing to physical disease or more often, to mental strain, good seeing habits are lost; normal and natural functioning is replaced by abnormal and unnatural functioning; the mind loses its efficiency as an interpreter, the physical conformation of the eye is distorted and the net result is that vision is impaired. From sub-normal vision there springs, in most cases, a certain chronic apprehension. The person who is used to seeing badly is afraid that he will see badly next time. In the minds of many afflicted men and women, this fearful anticipation amounts to a fixed, intense, pessimistic conviction that, for them, normal seeing is henceforth impossible.
Such an attitude is paralysing to the minds and eyes of those who entertain it. They go into every new seeing-situation afraid that they won’t see, or even convinced in advance that they can’t see. The result, not unnaturally, is that they don’t see. Positive faith enables a man to move mountains. Conversely, negative faith can prevent him from lifting a straw.
In seeing, as in all other activities of mind and mind-body, it is essential, if we are to do our work adequately, that we should cultivate an attitude of confidence combined with indifference — confidence in our capacity to do the job, and indifference to possible failure. We must feel sure that we can succeed some time, if we use the proper means and exercise sufficient patience; and we must not feel disappointed or annoyed if in fact we don’t succeed this particular time.
Confidence untempered by indifference may be almost as disastrous as the lack of confidence; for if we feel sure that we are going to succeed, and are distressed and affronted every time we fail, confidence will only be a source of negative emotions, which will, in their turn, increase the probability of failure.
For the person whose sight is sub-normal, the correct mental attitude may be expressed in some such words as these. ‘I know theoretically that defective vision can be improved. I feel certain that, if I learn the art of seeing, I can improve my own defective vision. I am practising the art of seeing as I look now, and it is likely that I shall see better than I did; but if I don’t see as well as I hope, I shall not feel wretched or aggrieved, but go on, until better vision comes to me.’
CHAPTER XIV
Memory and Imagination
THE CAPACITY FOR perception depends, as I have shown in an earlier chapter, upon the amount, the kind and the availability of past experiences. But past experiences exist for us only in the memory. Therefore it is true to say that perception depends upon memory.
Closely related to memory is imagination, which is the power of recombining memories in novel ways, so as to make mental constructions different from anything actually experienced in the past. The mind’s ability to interpret sensa is affected by the imagination as well as the memory.
The extent to which perception and, consequently, vision are dependent upon memory and imagination is a matter of everyday experience. We see familiar things more clearly than we see objects about which we have no stock of memories. And when, under emotional stress or excitement, our imagination is more than ordinarily active, it often happens that we interpret sensa as manifestations of the objects with which our imagination is busy, rather than as manifestations of the objects actually present in the external world.
The old sempstress, who cannot read without glasses, can see to thread her needle with the naked eye. Why? Because she is more familiar with needles than with print.
In the book he is reading, a person with normal vision comes upon a strange, polysyllabic, technical word, or a phrase in some foreign language of which he is ignorant. The letters of which these words are composed are precisely similar to those in which the rest of the book is printed; and yet this person finds it definitely harder to see them. Why? Because the rest of the book is in plain English, while the illegible words are in German, shall we say, or Russian, or the Graeco-Latin jargon of one of the sciences.
A man who can work all day at the office without undue fatigue of the eyes, is worn out by an hour at a museum, and comes home with a splitting headache. Why? Because, at the office, he is following a regular routine and looking at words and figures the like of which he looks at every day; whereas, in the museum, everything is strange, novel and outlandish.
Or take the case of the lady who is terrified of snakes, and who mistakes what to everyone else is obviously a length of rubber tubing for an enormous viper. Her vision, as tested on the Snellen Chart, is normal. Why, then, does she see what isn’t there? Because her imagination had been in the habit of using old memories of snakes to construct alarming images of the creatures, and because, under the influence of her imagination, her mind misinterpreted the sensa connected with the rubber tubing in such a way that she vividly ‘saw’ a viper.
Such examples, which could be multiplied almost indefinitely, leave no doubt that perception and therefore vision depend upon memory and, to a lesser degree, imagination. We see best the things about which, or the likes of which, we have a good stock of memories. And the more accurate these memories are, the more thorough-going and analytical the knowledge they embody, the better (all other things being equal) will be the vision. Indeed, the vision may be better, even when other things are not equal. Thus, the veteran microscopist may have worse sight, as measured on the Snellen Chart, than the first-year undergraduate whom he is instructing. Nevertheless, when he looks through his instrument, he will be able, thanks to his accurate memories of similar objects, to see the slide much more clearly than the novice can.
The truth that perception and vision are largely dependent upon past experiences, as recorded by the memory, has been recognized for centuries. But, so far as I am aware, the first person ever to pay any serious thought to what I may call the utilitarian and therapeutic corollaries of this truth was Dr. W. H. Bates. He it was who first asked the question: ‘How can this dependence of perception and vision upon memory and, to a lesser degree, imagination be exploited so as to improve people’s sight?’ And having asked the question, he did not rest until he had found a number of simple and practical answers. His followers have been working for many years on the same problem, and they too have produced their quota of devices for improving vision by working on the memory and imagination. Here, I shall give an account of some of the more effective of these procedures. But first a few more words about certain significant characteristics of that most mysterious mental activity, remembering.
Perhaps the most important fact about memory, in its relation to perception and vision, is that it will not work well under strain. Everyone is familiar with the experience of forgetting a name, straining to recapture it and ignominiously failing. Then, if one is wise, one will stop trying to remember and allow the mind to sink into a condition of alert passivity; the chances are that the name will come bobbing up into consciousness of its own accord. Memory works best, it would seem, when the mind is in a state of dynamic relaxation.
Experience has taught the great majority of people that there is a correlation between good memory and dynamic relaxation of mind — a condition which always tends to be accompanied by dynamic relaxation of the body as well.
They have never formulated the fact explicitly to themselves; but they know it unconsciously, or, to be more precise, they consistently act as though they knew it unconsciously. When they try to remember something, they instinctively ‘let go,’ because they have learnt, in the course of innumerable repetitions of the act of remembering, that the condition of ‘letting go’ is the most favourable for good memory. Now, this habit of ‘letting go’ in order to remember persists, in many cases, even when bad habits of mental and physical tension have been built up in relation to other activities, such as seeing. Consequently it often happens that, when people start remembering, they automatically and unconsciously put themsel
ves into that condition of dynamic mental relaxation which is propitious, not only for memory, but also for vision. This would seem to be the explanation of the fact (first observed, so far as I know, by Dr. Bates, but easily observable by anyone who is ready to fulfil the necessary conditions) that the simple act of remembering something clearly and distinctly brings an immediate improvement of vision.