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Whately has some observations on it which are worth reading. "This very ancient maxim," he observes, "which is most just and valuable, is one of which the misapplication has led to an unspeakable amount of evil. I mean, when men have sought to keep on the safe side, but have erred as to what is the safe side; for (1) what appears to be perfectly safe and harmless, will sometimes not be really such; and (2) that which is in itself harmless, may, under some circumstances, carry with it the admission of a dangerous principle" (pp. 52, 53).

But the limitation which we should be inclined to put upon the rule, as far more natural, and therefore far sounder, is this, -that the consideration of safety should never be resorted to until the consideration of right and truth has been exhausted. We mean, that a man, in considering any question of moral conduct, should first consider what is true, what is right,—with the utmost indifference as to whether the answer to that question will redound to safety or danger, ease or disquiet, convenience or inconvenience. But if this investigation, having been honestly pursued to the end, leaves no certain result; if every means have been tried in vain, and, after all, the scales hang even and undecided, then, and then only, may he resort to the consideration of whether of the two courses is the one of safety. We should all rightly despise a man who acted, on the hypothesis of there being future rewards and punishments, because he thought it safer, without ever giving himself the trouble to inquire what reasons there were for the belief; though we should regard as rightly prudent, and in that sense wise, a man who so acted because, after the most patient search, he still felt left in somewhat of doubt-felt that an assured decision was for him impossible.

We feel at once the miserable cowardice of flying to considerations of safety, when we ought to seek for what is true, and ought to be willing to follow that through all risks and dangers, nay, if need be, to certain destruction; so little has safety, primarily, to do with the matter. Hide nothing from us, let us know the worst, if it be the truth. 'Ev páei kaì öλeoσov, "Give light, and let us die," is the prayer of every true heart. The consideration of safety, whether here or hereafter, is alike secondary in any soul conscious of such a thing as truth. To try and stay our hunger after truth with considerations about our safety, is like the Indians, who fill their stomachs with earth to stave off the gnawings of want.

The cowardly nature of the maxim about the safe side, when so understood, has been so well characterised by Lord Shaftesbury, that we willingly conclude with another extract from him. "'Tis the most beggarly refuge imaginable," he says, "which

is so mightily cry'd up, and stands as a great maxim with many able men, that they should strive to have faith, and believe to the utmost, because if, after all, there be nothing in the matter, there will be no harm in being thus deceived; but, if there be any thing, it will be fatal for them not to have believed to the full.' But they are so far mistaken, that whilst they have this thought, 'tis certain they can never believe either to their satisfaction and happiness in this world, or with any advantage of recommendation to another. For besides that our reason, which knows the cheat, will never rest thorowly satisfy'd on such a bottom, but turn us often adrift, and toss us in a sea of doubt and perplexity; we cannot but actually grow worse in our religion, and entertain a worse opinion still of a Supreme Deity, whilst our belief is founded on so injurious a thought of Him."*

ART. IV. THE BLIND.

Des Aveugles: Considérations sur leur état physique, moral et intellectuel, avec un exposé complet des moyens propres à améliorer leur sort à l'aide de l'instruction et du travail. Par P. A. Dufau, Directeur de l'Institution Nationale des Aveugles de Paris. Ouvrage couronné par l'Académie Française. Seconde édition. Paris: Jules Renouard et Cie. 1850.

1851.

Souvenirs d'une Aveugle-née, recueillis et écrits par elle-même. Pub-
liés par P. A. Dufau. Paris: Renouard et Ĉie.
The Sense [of Vision] denied and lost. By Thomas Bull, M.D.
Edited by the Rev. B. G. Johns, Chaplain of the Blind School,
St. George's Fields. London: Longman and Co. 1859.

The Land of Silence and the Land of Darkness. By the Rev. B.
G. Johns. London: Longman and Co. 1857.

The Lost Senses. By John Kitto, D.D., F.S.A. Series II.-Blindness. London: Charles Knight and Co. 1845.

Essai sur l'Instruction des Aveugles, ou exposé analytique des procédés employés pour les instruire. Par le Docteur Guillié. Seconde édition. Paris: imprimé par les Aveugles. 1819.

"IN the month of August 1425, as we read in the Journal de Paris, under the reigns of Charles V. and Charles VI., p. 104, four blind men," says M. Dufau, "covered with armour and armed with staves, were shut up in the lists at the Hotel d'Armagnac with a pig of great size, which was to be the prize

• Characteristics, i. 37 (edit. 1732).

of the man who should kill it. When the contest began, the poor blind men, pursuing the pig and striking at random, gave one another such rude blows, to the great delight of the lookerson, that they grew angry; for when they were most confident of hitting the pig, they hit one another; and if they had not been covered with armour, they would in truth have slain each other."*

We are reminded by this story of Sydney Smith's remark in criticising some philosophical speculations of the earlier Greek schools, that common sense was not invented then. In the fifteenth century, natural human feeling seems scarcely to have been invented. But against the incident above related it is only fair to put the foundation of the Hospice des Quinze Vingts by St. Louis IX., in 1265, as an asylum for three hundred knights who had lost their eyesight in the crusades; and of a similar institution, dating also from the thirteenth century, at Chartres. We fear, however, that while the story told in the Journal de Paris illustrates with only too much truth the unthinking cruelty of a barbarous age, the establishments mentioned in the last sentence are to be attributed chiefly to the personal benevolence of the saintly monarch. Impulses good and bad, of the noblest generosity and the intensest selfishness, are not unfrequent in any nation at any time. They are most frequent, perhaps, among uncultivated people. But the systematic and deliberate consideration, to which and duty,

it is as a rule

"Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels,"

is of slow growth. To whatever extent it can be said to exist now among Christian communities, it is indisputably quite modern.

Of the condition of the blind in the ancient world little is known. The fact that they form the subject of special and benevolent legislation in the Jewish code-witness the precepts, "Thou shalt not put a stumbling-block in the way of the blind, but shalt fear thy God," and "Cursed be he that maketh the blind to wander out of the way"-is no doubt due to the fact, that throughout the East the blind form a very considerable proportion of the entire population. These injunctions are in contrast with the Jewish belief (possibly of later origin), that blindness was a divine judgment on, and a punishment of, sin. This belief is itself reversed in other Eastern countries, "where," as Mr. Johns remarks, "the blind are regarded in some sense as sacred persons under the special

* Des Aveugles, p. xiii.

favour of Heaven. Not long since," he adds, "an intelligent friend of ours, a great traveller, who happens to be blind, in passing through Tetuan, an old Moorish city of Africa, was welcomed and fêted with peculiar honours, chiefly on account of his blindness."*

If we do not find among ancient heathen nations any systematic provision for the relief of the blind, as little do we find any trace of inhuman feelings directed towards them. Medical works leave no doubt, M. Dufau tells us, that the blind were numerous in Italy and in Roman Asia, though one of the most prolific causes of congenital blindness did not then exist. His statement, that institutions of public benevolence are foreign to the spirit of nations among whom slavery reigns, is substantially true. The reason is, that the necessitous in such countries are principally slaves; and that slaves, being private property, are naturally also a private charge, and not a public burden. We cannot, therefore, accept the non-existence of asylums and training-schools for the blind in Greece and Italy as an illustration of heathen indifference to suffering. M. Dufau's remarks on this subject contain a larger amount of conjecture than is consistent with sound historical judgment.

"Among the thousands of slaves," he says, "possessed by an opulent Roman, the child which was born blind, sometimes no doubt became a kind of drudge (souffre-douleur), exposed to the caprices of his master, and the barbarous sports of his degraded companions; oftener, perhaps, being regarded simply as a burdensome property, he was slain in his cradle; so we may reasonably conjecture, when we notice that no blind man is ever signalised among the clan of freedmen as having worked his way to liberty by his talent. How is it that the blind, if they were allowed to live, did not manifest, as in our days, that general and constant aptitude for music, which forms one of the distinctive traits of their organisation; how is it that no skilful performer on the flute or lyre is found, recommended by his very condition to the notice of writers? Moreover, to suppose the deliberate destruction of children afflicted with an important organic defect, is not to calumniate antiquity. At Sparta they were thrown into the Eurotas; and we know that, even at the present day, among some Eastern nations, infirm infants newly born pass at once from life to death."

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An argument, every clause of which is introduced by a "peut-être," a "sans doute," or a "conjecture à bon droit,' fails of cogency. The inference from Sparta to Rome, from the destruction of free-born children on the Eurotas to that of blind-born slaves on the Tiber, and from existing practices in

* Lands of Silence and Darkness, p. 98.

It is not, however, entirely true, as the relief given to the adúvaroi at Athens, and to the alimentarii at Rome, shows.

Eastern nations to the conduct of the nations of classical antiquity, involves a logical leap in which we cannot follow the author. But even if the facts he states did warrant the conclusion (in the absence of distinct testimony) that Roman slaves born blind were habitually put to death in their cradles, this circumstance would help M. Dufau but little. The great majority of blind persons (slaves no less than others) become blind in adult age; very few indeed before their eighth year; while no one (according to M. Dufau) is ever, strictly speaking, born blind.* The destruction of all slaves who lost their sight in early childhood would not materially have diminished the total number of blind slaves. Considering, moreover, that the younger among the blind would almost necessarily from the inapplicability of the ordinary means of culture, and the non-existence of any special system of training-be intellectually less advanced than those whose sight was lost at a maturer age, it is not among the former that we should expect to find a talent capable of working its way to freedom. With regard to the fact that no mention is made, in any classical author, of slaves acquiring celebrity by musical talent, it is worth noting that music does not seem to have been among the liberal or semi-liberal arts, which slaves were sometimes encouraged to cultivate. There were servi literati, literary slaves, who acted as readers, amanuenses, copiers for booksellers, secretaries, short-hand writers; but we find no mention of a class of musical slaves, corresponding to the anagnostæ and librarii. The tradition which represented Homer as blind, and the description given in the Odyssey of the Phæacian bard Demodocus

τὸν πέρι Μοῦσ ̓ ἐφίλησε, δίδου δ' ἀγαθόν τε κακόν τε
ὀφθαλμῶν μὲν ἄμερσε, δίδου δ ̓ ἡδεῖαν ἀοιδήν†—

point distinctly to a sympathy with the blind, as at once chastened by and loved of the gods, to whom, as they are

"from the cheerful ways of men

Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair

Presented with a universal blank

Of Nature's works,

So much the rather the celestial light

Shines inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiates

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that they may see and tell

Of things invisible to mortal sight."

"Il n'y a pas d'aveugles-nés, à proprement parler, c'est à dire d'enfants sortant aveugles du sein de leur mère, par suite de l'état spécial de l'appareil visuel." Des Aveugles, p. 1.

† Odyssey, viii. 63:

"Dear to the Muse who gave his days to flow,
With mighty blessings mixed with mighty woe,
In clouds and darkness quenched his visual ray,
Yet gave him power to raise the lofty lay." Pope.

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