n looks within
himself and in time finds the measure and the meaning of the universe.

THE LARGER SANCTIONS

XII

THE LARGER SANCTIONS

SO, in the midst of life, eager, imperious life, the deaf-blind child,
fettered to the bare rock of circumstance, spider-like, sends out
gossamer threads of thought into the measureless void that surrounds
him. Patiently he explores the dark, until he builds up a knowledge of
the world he lives in, and his soul meets the beauty of the world, where
the sun shines always, and the birds sing. To the blind child the dark
is kindly. In it he finds nothing extraordinary or terrible. It is his
familiar world; even the groping from place to place, the halting
steps, the dependence upon others, do not seem strange to him. He does
not know how many countless pleasures the dark shuts out from him. Not
until he weighs his life in the scale of others' experience does he
realize what it is to live forever in the dark. But the knowledge that
teaches him this bitterness also brings its consolation--spiritual
light, the promise of the day that shall be.

The blind child--the deaf-blind child--has inherited the mind of seeing
and hearing ancestors--a mind measured to five senses. Therefore he must
be influenced, even if it be unknown to himself, by the light, colour,
song which have been transmitted through the language he is taught, for
the chambers of the mind are ready to receive that language. The brain
of the race is so permeated with colour that it dyes even the speech of
the blind. Every object I think of is stained with the hue that belongs
to it by association and memory. The experience of the deaf-blind
person, in a world of seeing, hearing people, is like that of a sailor
on an island where the inhabitants speak a language unknown to him,
whose life is unlike that he has lived. He is one, they are many; there
is no chance of compromise. He must learn to see with their eyes, to
hear with their ears, to think their thoughts, to follow their ideals.

If the dark, silent world which surrounds him were essentially different
from the sunlit, resonant world, it would be incomprehensible to his
kind, and could never be discussed. If his feelings and sensations were
fundamentally different from those of others, they would be
inconceivable except to those who had similar sensations and feelings.
If the mental consciousness of the deaf-blind person were absolutely
dissimilar to that