Ida. I have ever believed that there were incidents recorded, which left no doubt of the truth of innate idealism. Dr. Beattie has observed: “Men born blind, or who have lost all remembrance of light and colours, are as capable of invention, and dream as frequently, as those who see.”
Ev. These, fair lady, are surely very imperfect data. If a person loses remembrance of individual colour, he does not lose the power of comparing or of judging variety of colour. And, again, although he may be congenitally blind, yet if there be any other sense but sight, through which the mind can perceive or receive external impression, the objection must fail.
There are very strange communities of the senses, which you may smile at, yet are they perfectly true.
Dr. Blacklock, (who was very early in life struck blind,) expressed his ideas of colour, by referring to a peculiar sound, the two being as it were synonymous to him. And he fancied also, in his dreaming, that he was connected to other bodies by myriads of threads or rays of feeling.
I may assure you, too, that on the loss of any one sense, the subsequent dreams, after a lapse of time, will not be referred to that sense.
Dr. Darwin will supply you with very illustrative instances of this; from which you will learn, that after blindness had afflicted certain persons, they never dreamed that they saw objects in their sleep: and a deaf gentleman, who had talked with his fingers for thirty years, invariably dreamed also of finger-speaking, and never alluded to any dreaming of friends having orally conversed with him.
Astr. I believe that a black colour was disagreeable to Cheselden’s blind boy, from the moment he saw it.
Ev. Because, from certain laws of refraction, the effect was instantly painful to his eye.
Astr. I remember, Sir Walter Scott, in his “Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft,” informs us that “those experienced in the education of the deaf and dumb find that their pupils, even cut off from all instruction by ordinary means, have been able to form, out of their own unassisted conjectures, some ideas of the existence of a Deity, and of the distinction between the soul and body.”
Ev. And do you not see, dear Astrophel, the dilemma of this argument? Before the deaf and dumb pupil can adopt a language, by which to make his preceptor sensible of his thoughts or sentiments, he must have had certain facts or knowledge imparted to him, by signs or other modes of instruction. The modes of mutual understanding must first emanate from the tutor, and with these ideas may be excited, which, at first sight, may seem to be innate or unassisted.