Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 2.djvu/206

196 the audible words. If he cannot read, it is well known that he is almost like an irrational animal, while the man born blind is from the first a thoroughly rational being.

Sight is an active, hearing a passive sense. Therefore sounds affect our mind in a disturbing and hostile manner, and indeed they do so the more in proportion as the mind is active and developed; they distract all thoughts and instantly destroy the power of thinking. On the other hand, there is no analogous disturbance through the eye, no direct effect of what is seen, as such, upon the activity of thought (for naturally we are not speaking here of the influence which the objects looked at have upon the will); but the most varied multitude of things before our eyes admits of entirely unhindered and quiet thought. Therefore the thinking mind lives at peace with the eye, but is always at war with the ear. This opposition of the two senses is also confirmed by the fact that if deaf and dumb persons are cured by galvanism they become deadly pale with terror at the first sounds they hear (Gilbert's "Annalen der Pkysik," vol. x. p. 382), while blind persons, on the contrary, who have been operated upon, behold with ecstasy the first light, and unwillingly allow the bandages to be put over their eyes again. All that has been said, however, can be explained from the fact that hearing takes place by means of a mechanical vibration of the nerve of hearing which is at once transmitted to the brain, while seeing, on the other hand, is a real action of the retina which is merely stimulated and called forth by light and its modifications; as I have shown at length in my physiological theory of colours. But this whole opposition stands in direct conflict with that coloured-ether, drum-beating theory which is now everywhere unblushingly served up, and which seeks to degrade the eye's sensation of light to a mechanical vibration, such as primarily that of hearing actually is, while nothing can be more different than the still, gentle effect of light and the alarm-drum of hearing. If we add