Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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Wipe the blackboard once more, or prepare another clean sheet of paper, and, this time, use your pencil to do a little writing. Begin with your own signature. Because your head and neck move so jerkily, it will look like the signature of an alcoholic illiterate. But practice makes perfect; take a new sheet and begin again. Do this four or five times; then write any other word or phrase that appeals to you.
Like some of the other procedures described above, these drills may seem rather silly, childish and undignified. But this is not important. The important thing is that they work. A little nose-writing, followed by a few minutes of palming, will do wonders in relieving the fatigue of a strained mind and staring eyes, and will result in a perceptible temporary improvement of defective vision. This temporary improvement will become permanent, as the normal and natural functioning fostered by nose-writing and the other procedures described in this book, becomes habitual and automatic.
Mind and body form a single unitary whole. Consequently, such mental processes as remembering and imagining are facilitated by the performance of bodily movements conformable to the objects of our thoughts — the kind of movements we would make if, instead of merely remembering and imagining, we were actually at work upon the things we are thinking about. For example, when remembering or imagining letters or numerals, it is often helpful to place the ball of the thumb in contact with the forefinger and, with it, to print the letters you are working on. Or, alternatively, they may be printed in nose-writing. Or again, if you prefer a more realistic gesture, you may pick up an imaginary pen and trace the signs upon an imaginary notebook.
The aid of the body may also be enlisted through speech. As you remember or imagine a letter, form its name with your lips, or even utter it aloud. The spoken word is so intimately associated with all our processes of thought that any familiar movement of the mouth and vocal cords tends automatically to evoke an image of the thing represented by the articulate sound, which is the product of that movement. Consequently, it is always easier to see what one is reading, when one pronounces the words aloud. People for whom reading is a novelty or a rather difficult and infrequent task — such as children, for example, and the imperfectly educated — realize this fact instinctively. In order to sharpen their vision for the unfamiliar symbols on the page before them, they habitually read aloud. People with defective vision are people whom their disability has reduced, so to speak, to the cultural ranks. However great their learning, they have become like children or illiterates, for whom the printed word is something strange and hard to decipher. This being so, they should, while re-acquiring the art of seeing, do the same as the primitives do — form the words they read with their lips and point at them with their fingers. The movement of the organs of speech will evoke auditory and visual images of the words associated with them. Memory and imagination will be stimulated, and the mind will do its work of interpretation, perception and seeing with increased efficiency. Meanwhile the pointing finger (particularly if it is kept almost imperceptibly moving beneath the word which is being looked at) will help to keep the eyes centralized and rapidly shifting over a small area of maximum clarity of vision. In his own way and for his own purposes, the child is eminently wise. When disease or mal-fimctioning has reduced us, so far as reading is concerned, to the child’s level, we should not be ashamed to avail ourselves of this instinctive wisdom.
CHAPTER XV
Myopia
ALL PERSONS SUFFERING from defective vision will derive benefit from practising the fundamental techniques of the art of seeing described in the preceding chapters. In the present chapter and that which follows I shall indicate ways in which certain of these fundamental techniques may be adapted to the needs of persons suffering specifically from short sight, long sight, astigmatism and squint, and shall also give an account of some new procedures, particularly effective in these various manifestations of disease, hereditary idiosyncrasy and, above all, mal-functioning.
ITS CAUSES
Myopia is almost invariably an acquired condition, which makes its appearance during childhood. It has been attributed to the close work which school children are compelled to perform; and great efforts have been made in all civilized countries to reduce the amount of such work done within a given period, to enlarge the type of text-books and to improve lighting conditions in schools. The effects of these reforms have been entirely disappointing. Myopia is even commoner today than it was in the past.
This deplorable state of things seems to be due to three principal causes. First, the attempt to improve the environmental conditions prevailing in schools have failed, in certain respects, to go far enough. Second, in other respects, the reforms carried out have been misguided. And third, the reformers have almost completely neglected the psychological reasons for defective vision — a neglect which is particularly serious in the case of children.
It is in the direction of better lighting that the reformers have as yet not gone far enough. Dr. Luckiesh has demonstrated experimentally that visual tasks become easier, and that muscular nervous tension declines, as the intensity of illumination on a given task is increased from one to a hundred foot-candles. He made no experiments with higher intensities, but considers that there is every reason to suppose that muscular nervous tension (the index of strain and fatigue) would continue to fall off with a further increase of illumination to a thousand foot-candles. Now, a child in a well-built, well-lit modern school may think himself extremely lucky if he gets as much as twenty foot-candles of illumination to work with. In many schools he will be given as little as ten or even five. There is reason to believe that many boys and girls might be saved from myopia if they were given sufficient light. In existing conditions, only children with the most perfect seeing habits can hope to get through their schooling without straining their organs of vision. But strain is the principal cause of mal-functioning, and this, so far as many children are concerned, means myopia.
In their attempt to improve lighting, the reformers have not gone far enough. In their attempt to improve the typography of school books they have gone too far in a wrong direction. For the purposes of clear, unstrained seeing, the best print is not necessarily the largest. Large print, it is true, has a specious air of being very easy to read; but precisely because it seems so easy, it lures the eyes and mind into temptation. They try to see whole lines of this all too legible print with equal clarity at the same time. Central fixation is lost, the eyes and attention cease to shift, habits of staring are developed and, instead of being improved, vision is actually impaired. For good seeing, the best print is one that is not too large, but fairly heavy, so that there is plenty of strong contrast between the black letters and their background. When confronted by such print, the mind and its eyes are not tempted by any obvious excess of legibility to try to see too much too well. Instead, the smaller type encourages them to read with central fixation and in a state of dynamic relaxation. Dr. Bates, indeed, made use of the smallest available print for re-educating defective vision. He would give his pupils not merely diamond type to read (the smallest that a printer can set up), but even those microscopic reductions of print which can only be made by the camera. This microscopic type cannot be read except when the eyes and mind are in a state of complete dynamic relaxation, and are doing their looking with perfect central fixation. With a good teacher to help him, a person with even very serious defects of sight (I speak here from personal experience) can be got into the condition in which he can read words printed in microscopic type. And the result is not eye-strain or fatigue, but a marked temporary improvement of vision for other objects. Working with microscopic type without a teacher is not too easy, and the unwary enthusiast may be tempted to set about it in the wrong way. Consequently I have not included any detailed description of this procedure. If I mention it here, it is merely to show that the correlation between large print and good seeing is not the obvious and self-evident thing which the designers of school books have commonly imagined it to be.
By neglecting the psychological reasons why school children develop defects of vision the reformers have absolutely guaranteed at least a partial failure of their efforts. Even if the lighting of schools were improved out of all recognition, even if the best possible print were used in all the primers and textbooks, large numbers of children would still undoubtedly develop myopia and other defects of vision. They would do so because they are often bored and sometimes frightened, because they dislike sitting cooped up for long hours, reading and listening to stuff which seems to them largely nonsensical, and compelled to perform tasks which they find not only difficult, but pointless. Further, the spirit of competition and the dread of blame or ridicule foster, in many childish minds, a chronic anxiety, which adversely affects every part of the organism, not excluding the eyes and the mental functions associated with seeing. Nor is this all; the exigencies of schooling are such that children must constantly be given novel and unfamiliar things to look at. Every time a new mathematical formula is inscribed on the blackboard, every time the class is set the task of learning a new page of Latin grammar, or to study a new set of features on a map, every child concerned is being forced to pay close and concentrated attention to something completely unfamiliar — that is to say, something which it is peculiarly difficult to see, something which sets up a certain amount of strain in the eyes and minds even of those who have the best of seeing habits.
About seventy per cent, of children are sufficiently stolid and well balanced to be able to go through school without visual mishap. The rest emerge from the educational ordeal with myopia or some other defect of vision.
Some of the psychological reasons for bad sight can probably never be eliminated from the school; for they seem to be inherent in the very process of herding children together and imposing upon them discipline and book learning. Others can be got rid of — but only by a rare combination of good will and intelligence. (For instance, until all teachers become angels and geniuses, how are you going to prevent a considerable number of children in every generation from being frightened and bored?)
There is, however, one field in which the reasons for bad seeing can be eliminated fairly certainly and without much difficulty: it is possible to mitigate the ocular and mental strain, caused by the constant recurrence of situations in which children are called upon to look at something unfamiliar. The extremely simple technique for achieving this end was devised by Dr. Bates, and for some years was used successfully in a number of schools in different parts of the United States. Owing to changes in the administration of these schools and to pressure exerted by organized orthodoxy, the practices suggested by Dr. Bates were gradually abandoned. The fact is regrettable; for there is evidence that they actually did good in preserving the children’s vision, while the nature of the practices was such that it was absolutely impossible that they should ever do anyone any harm.
Dr. Bates’s technique for relieving the strain caused by constantly looking at unfamiliar objects was exceedingly simple. It consisted merely in hanging a Snellen Chart in some conspicuous position in the schoolroom, and instructing the children, as soon as the chart was thoroughly familiar, to look at it for a few moments whenever they had any difficulty in seeing the blackboard, or a map, or the pages, say, of a grammar or geometry book. Because the chart was an old friend, the children had no difficulty in seeing its graduated letters. The act of reading gave them new faith in their own powers and relieved the strain caused by having to pay concentrated attention to something strange and unfamiliar. Strong in their newfound confidence and relaxation, the children then turned back to their work and found that their power of seeing it had markedly improved.
The Snellen Chart possesses, as we have seen, certain disadvantages. Therefore it will probably be advisable to substitute for it a large commercial calendar of the kind described in an earlier chapter. Alternatively, children may be instructed to turn, whenever vision falls off or fatigue sets in, to one of the notices or mottoes which generally hang in schoolrooms. All that is necessary is that the words, letters or numerals regarded shall be perfectly familiar; for it is by familiarity that the ill effects of unfamiliarity are neutralized.
I need hardly add that there is no reason why this procedure should be confined to the schoolroom. A calendar or any other perfectly memorized piece of printed matter is a valuable addition to the furniture in any room, where people have to do concentrated work involving the seeing of unfamiliar objects, or strange combinations of familiar elements. Incipient strain may be very rapidly relieved by looking — analytically, or with a small-scale swinging shift — at the well-known words or numerals. Add an occasional period of palming and, if possible, of sunning — and there is no reason why the incipient strain should ever mature into fatigue and impairment of vision.
TECHNIQUES OF RE-EDUCATION
From this long, but not irrelevant, digression, let us return to a consideration of the procedures for re-educating the myope towards normality. In the more serious cases, the help of a capable teacher will probably be necessary, if any considerable improvement is to be achieved. But all can derive benefit, often a great deal of benefit, from following the fundamental rules of the art of seeing, particularly as these rules are adapted to the special needs of the short-sighted.
Palming, which the myope should practise as often and as long as he possibly can, may be made doubly valuable if the scenes and episodes remembered, while the eyes are closed and covered, are so chosen that the inward eye has to range from near to far over considerable distances. At one time or another, most of us have stood on railway bridges watching the trains as they approached and receded again across the landscape. Such memories are very profitable to the myope; for they stimulate the mind to come out of its narrow world of short sight and plunge into the distance. At the same time, the apparatus of accommodation, which is closely correlated with the mind, is set unconsciously to work.
Friends approaching along familiar roads, horses galloping away across fields, boats gliding along rivers, buses arriving and departing — all such memories of depth and distance are valuable. Sometimes, too, it may be profitable to supplement them with scenes constructed by the fancy. Thus, one may imagine oneself rolling billiard balls down an enormously long table, or flinging a stone onto the ice of a great lake and watching it skim away into the distance.
Sunning and swinging require no special modification for the myope. The drills designed to cure the bad habit of staring and to foster mobility and central fixation can also be performed without modification, except in the case of the calendar drill, which may be adapted to the needs of the short-sighted person in the following ways.
Begin by doing the drills at the distance from which the large numerals can be seen most easily. Do them first with both eyes together, then (covering one eye with a patch or handkerchief) with each eye separately. If one eye does its work of sensing less well than the other, give it more work — but lengthen the periods of palming between drills, so as to avoid fatigue. After a few days, when the eyes and mind have become accustomed to doing a certain amount of seeing without the aid of spectacles (which will still have to be worn in times of emergency, or of potential danger to oneself or others, as when driving a car or walking in crowded streets), move the chair a foot or two further from the calendar and repeat the drills at that distance. In a few weeks it should be possible to increase very considerably the distance from which things can be clearly seen.
Myopic eyes should be given plenty of practice in changing the focus from the near point to the distance. To do this, procure a small pocket calendar of the same model as the commercial calendar on the wall — that is to say, with one month printed in large type, and the preceding and succeeding months in smaller type below. Hold the pocket calendar a few inches in front of the eyes, glance at the figure ‘one’ on the large-type month, then look away and locate the ‘one’ on the large-type month of the wall calendar. Close the eyes and relax. Then proceed t
o do the same with the succeeding figures. All the steps of the drill may be done in this way on the two calendars, with both eyes together and each eye separately and at progressively greater and greater distances from the wall calendar. Short-sighted people will find this a pretty strenuous exercise, and should therefore be particularly careful to interrupt the drill at frequent intervals for periods of palming and, if possible, sunning. If a small pocket calendar does not happen, on some occasion, to be available, the face of a watch may be used instead. Hold it close to the eyes, glance at the ‘one’ and then away to the corresponding numeral on the wall calendar. Close the eyes, relax and go on in the same way round the whole dial.
Myopes can read without glasses, but at a point abnormally close to the eyes. It is possible for them, however, to read without undue strain at points an inch or two further away. Practice in reading at these further points will gradually eliminate any slight feeling of discomfort associated with the more distant vision — provided always, of course, that attention be properly directed and staring (the great vice of the short-sighted) avoided. At the end of every page, or even of every paragraph, the myope should look up for a few seconds to glance at some thoroughly familiar object at a distance, such as a calendar on the wall, or the view out of the window. Further hints on the art of reading will be given in the chapter especially devoted to that subject.
When travelling by bus or car, myopes should take the opportunity provided of glancing with quick, ‘flashing’ regards at the lettering on billboards, shop-fronts and the like. No attempt should be made to ‘hold’ the words so regarded, until they are clearly seen. Glance for a moment, and close the eyes. Then, if the movement of the vehicle permits it, glance again. If you see, well and good; if you don’t see, that also is well and good — for there is every reason to believe that you will see better some time.