Page:Labour and childhood.djvu/116

 far as the higher sense-organs are concerned there is no possible room for doubt as regards the symptoms! The poorer and more neglected the group of children the greater percentage of injured eyes and ears does it furnish. We see this more particularly when we come to think of eyes.

Perhaps at first a child with deteriorating senses may strive to overcome his defects—may listen, and look eagerly, obeying an impulse that indicates how the door of the senses must be opened wide, and how this opening is a great part of the whole of the life of childhood. But very soon the effort, so often balked, becomes feebler. He resigns himself. The world narrows round him. He does not need to project that poor, unsatisfactory ear or eye. If in later life any instrument can help him it will be one which can be compared not to a tool, or projected hand and arm, but rather to a crutch that takes the place of a limb that has been lost.

The Eye! The part played by vision in mental life appears greater and greater as one looks below the