tter understanding of their problems.

The successful work of Miss Foley as a student in the California School
for the Blind, as a volunteer teacher, and in recent years as home
teacher for the California State Library, makes these lectures
particularly important and authoritative.

MILTON J. FERGUSON,
State Librarian.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BLINDNESS.

In view of the widespread interest now manifested in the blind and their
problems--an interest deepened by reports from the warring countries--I
feel that a knowledge of the psychology of blindness should prove of
great help to those wishing to take part in the re-education of the
war-blinded soldiers.

As early as 1773, Diderot wrote an essay on the psychology of blindness,
and, as this essay was written at the very beginning of blind education,
it is interesting to note that his ideas coincide with the most advanced
deductions on the subject today. However, as these deductions are not
very numerous, and as the available literature is very scant, I shall be
obliged to draw largely from my own experience and that of other blind
persons, in presenting the subject to you.

First, let us consider the subject from the point of view of one who has
been blind from early infancy, whose fingers are his eyes, and whose
mental vision enables him to see many things not revealed by physical
sight. A blind man once said, when asked if he would not be glad to have
his eyesight, "to improve the organs I have, would be as good as to give
me that which is wanting in me." This sentence sums up the whole aim of
blind education. Dr. Eichholtz, a noted educator of the blind, says:
"Education of the blind absolutely fails in its object, in so far as it
fails to develop the remaining faculties to compensate for the want of
sight." "Touch and sight must be developed by means which practically in
all respects are dissimilar. A blind man discerns the sensation from the
real presence of an object at his fingers' end, only by the force or
weakness of that very sensation." So, then, let us consider that, to the
blind, fingers are eyes, and remember that they have ten instead of two.
As I have been blind since early infancy, my own case offers an
illustration in point, so I hope you will not misunderstand the
predominance of the personal note in these observations.

Blindness does not lead to any refinement of the senses of touch,
hearing or smell, but to a greater keenness in the int