The Road of Silence

I

I HAVE just finished reading of two men, to both of whom had come the great disaster of deafness. By one it seemed to have been taken with a calm philosophy and ready courage, due, perhaps, to a more imperturbable mind and serener disposition, or possibly to a less vivid power of feeling. But to the other it was a blow from which he reeled, and his philosophy was brought to bear as against fire and sword. To him it was a curse, and he openly called it so, as he appealed to the more fortunate man for light on the problem of ‘how to go on living.’ The fine spirit and patience of the latter excites my deep admiration, but my heart goes out to the man with the curse. I know the road which he traveled, for I, too, am deaf. In the end, without doubt, he will win back a poise which is sufficient, but he will achieve it against fearful odds.

Deafness may easily be a curse to any one until he has learned how to manage it. It is like a sudden foe which has entrenched itself, not for a swift and terrible battle in which you may win or go down, but rather, for a battle which must be fought every day to the end of life, — a foe which has made itself a part of your country forever. Victories do not vanquish it, nor triumphs bring the end. What this can mean unless one is able in some degree to get the upper hand, it is not hard to understand.

I do not know whether some special impression is always produced as the result of deafness or not. In the instance above, it was a curse. In my own case, my conception of its effect was literally that of a lost world. The palpable reality of life was suddenly void — its elemental phenomena suspended. Silence fell upon the world like a hush of death, and I alone seemed alive in the midst of it.

All my life I had found that world a beautiful and satisfying place. Always I had felt attuned to its manifestations — the subtle appeal of its hidden things. There were a thousand by-paths into its mystery and beauty, wherein I walked and found companionship and pleasure, — pleasures profoundly simple, but profoundly real and enduring. Whatever else failed, the music of the world was always there. For instance, I was born within sound of the sea and had always known and loved it. Its moods and voices were as familiar as those of the woods and fields. Its faintest call I heard and understood, for the sea has many tongues. When its storms were making up and the wind was ’outside,’one of my lifelong pleasures had been to listen in the dark to the heavy rote on a windward shore a mile away, — the long rake of the surf taking the worn rocks of the beach down with it, — a pause, and then the muffled rumble when it rolled them in again. The rise and fall of the deep far-off sound lulled me to sleep on many a night of childhood and womanhood.

When the sea itself was still there were the bells of the shipping in the harbor. The soft hollow notes of the ‘ship’s bells’ in the night, the brief music, clear and high, of the bugle’s call on the battleships, were always floating across the water, weirdly sweet; and still more beautiful than all the rest, came the mellow warning of the seaward buoy-bell. Sometimes it seems as if I still can hear the tolling of that bell.

Again, many days I have stood in the tower of an off-shore light in a winter gale. Two people standing side by side could not make themselves heard above the roar of the storm. The wind played a thunderous rhythm on the vibrant iron roof. The iron floor shook with sound beneath the feet. The shock of seas against the cliffs below was like the boom of heavy guns. It was as though one stood at the heart of the elements and listened secretly to their fury and power. But now, whether it is the wildest storm or a day when the water is still and blue, both alike are but moving pictures. There is no realness there. The winds never blow. The sea is silenced, and I have but a dream for the sound of its bells. Oftentimes I answer the call in my heart to go to it, always to find that an old friend has forsaken me — its familiar hail withheld.

Wholly unlike and yet akin to the life of the sea was the life of the fields and woods. As far back as I can remember, it was an intimate and daily part of my own. I think I had grown to youth before I realized that it was not of almost hourly interest to everybody about me. Thirty years ago the present popular habit of outdoor study did not prevail in the country, but our house was an exception. It was my father, during his infrequent stays at home, who went with me into the woods to trail the rolling drum of the partridge in the spring, my mother who sat with me beside a rock in the field, to discover how a cricket sang. She taught me much of nature’s lore, but she taught me a deeper and finer knowledge — the beauty of the world.

In those days the land was full of birds. There were woods all about us, and from May till August we were waked at dawn by such a splendid chorus of bird-song as would amaze and thrill the heart of a modern bird lover. No memory stands out with more vividness than this music. It was interwoven with the plastic influences of my youth. For years I never heard a whitethroat that it did not take me back to the nights when I sat on the porch with my father, whose cast of mind dispensed with much that was common to his generation, speculating on ‘the many worlds or few’ of the starry skies, but always consciously lingering, till a certain whitethroat woke on the edge of the woods and sent an eerie whistle across the dark to us.

When I remember the voice of the hermit thrush, I realize that only poets may speak of it. But the privilege of long knowing it leaves an echo of its mystery and beauty within the soul. Years later, when I heard it ascending from the old familiar woods in the springtime, it seemed a living link between me and those two who no longer heard.

But all these voices with their peculiar significance for me, went with my lost world. Callimachus wrote of Heraclitus two thousand and two hundred years ago, —

But deafness can take that which death itself would leave, and to us are lost even the voices that would sing to us from the dead. The loss of such things goes far beyond what is meant by a handicap or a serious inconvenience. They are the things which minister to the spirit, and there is no inborn composure, nor faith nor religion, nor wealth nor power, that can take their place.

There is obtained a certain easement of heart and mind against the changes which enter life — the shadows which darken it — by following along the mere commonplace external condition of things. The doing of this helps to unify a past and present which may have suddenly become dissimilar, and ignores disturbing events with a gentle insistence that is benign and restoring. It holds the personality unconsciously to a community of interest with life. But let the elemental possibility of this be destroyed — as deafness destroys — and the personality is stripped of its readjusting power both from within and from without. It cannot get bearings. The world beats in upon the deaf man with all the old insistence, but the reflexes within himself are baffled and shut off. Tormenting vacuity occupies the place of his comprehending and responding self.

This is one of the most disastrous results of deafness — its sense of incapacitating. It works a psychological hardship, not alone in daily intercourse, but in the personal feeling of the potential difference between the former and present self. A writer on this subject who spoke from experience has said that a deaf person is partly dead. I have heard every deaf person I know make identically the same remark. It is the voicing of a terrible revelation which comes to him, and the only reason he is silent under it, is because he remembers that deafness is entirely different from what he supposed it was, when he himself could hear — that he could not then have accepted this idea and that others cannot now. The hearing person invariably regards this statement as having an imaginative coloring. He cannot grasp it. He has no test of experience by which he can arrive at the inner meaning, which is neither moral nor figurative, but is even more direful than the words themselves convey, for a dead person has the advantage of not knowing that he is dead. But the deaf person is not only partly dead — he lives his deadness. He is buried alive.

II

There were, of course, many other features which made up my lost world, but the two I have spoken of are typical of its reality and significance. The impairment of those things most intimately connected with the utilitarian and social relations of life, did not, to me, belong there. Their mechanical and material phases separated them into a group of results by themselves, and, while an intense source of trouble, they were never so destructive to the spirit, so subversive of my individuality, as the loss of the beauty and inspiration that went out with certain sounds.

The depression which invariably comes with the beginning of deafness is strangely and intensely overpowering. It exists sometimes indefinitely. The word depression, as commonly used, admits of varied shades of meaning. It all but carries with it a vague impression of lack of will-power, a more or less voluntary indifference to moral effort. But let no one suppose that its use here indicates any mere dull, dispirited outlook on life, or any other voluntary mental view of one’s self or one’s future. There is nothing voluntary about it. It is a feeling deeply physical as well as mental — a mingled condition of woeful sickness and sadness that beggars description. The distress and shock over what has happened to one, and the first experience of what it is like, is the initial factor. But considering what it ought to be as compared with the shock of blindness, which, it seems to me, must be sufficient to produce permanent blackest despair, the depression of deafness is out of all proportion — a matter which I shall refer to later.

A second factor is the knowledge of one’s isolation, in that no one knows or can be made to know his true state, since deafness is so entirely different from what people suppose. This knowledge is the height of loneliness — a solitariness of mind that is devastating to the most heroic temperament. And yet neither of these two things is the fundamental explanation of the proverbial depression of the deaf as compared with the cheerfulness of the blind.

Just at this point, I was more fortunate than many, for I discovered certain things concerning depression, about this time, that proved of untold value to me. I have marked this point with a milestone, as the place of the first step where I began to retrieve for, of course, nobody supposes that any one who becomes deaf, however flat he is morally thrown down, is not going to get on to his feet again.

Fully recognizing the immeasurable difference between being deaf and being blind, — that the interests and possibilities of life seem always largely open to any person who can still see, — my perplexed question was, why does not the realization of this remove one’s trouble of heart? why does it not produce its logical result, a normal zest and pleasure of being — the age-old anticipation that mere living is good? In spite of all comparisons, why did I still feel indescribably depressed and hopeless? In pursuance of this, one wiser than I suggested that there must be something more elemental in the background of these things than was generally understood, and that, according to certain principles of modern science, if identified, it might prove of help to me. Here was the inkling of an idea which I grasped, metaphorically, with both hands.

Now it developed after a little rereading and thought, that the whole matter fell under the head of facts that were perfectly familiar to me. Scientists have shown that sound not only informs the intellect, as does sight, but that, much in excess of that sense, it excites feelings — that is, sound pure and simple has a specific relation to feelings widely different from that of sight. Its primary effect was the creating of moods. It has been specialized into all kinds of forms which convey facts to the intelligence, but its earliest business was something else, and that business still exists. This being so, the simple fact is, that sound has far more to do fundamentally with originating our emotions, or how we feel from day to day, than has what we see.

It should be said, in passing, that there is very little recognition of this fact by the person with normal hearing. Sight and sound are so interwoven for him that he does not discriminate as to what belongs intrinsically to each in the province of feelings. It is only when the two are clearly separated, as in deafness or blindness, that experience takes note of what belongs to the one and the other. Of course, however, this is not the source of the scientific knowledge referred to. That has come from the long investigations of men of science.

This special function of sound may be easily illustrated. For instance, quick lively music produces so great an inward change—an exhilaration — that the body frequently expresses some outward manifestation of it. The foot begins to tap, the hand to mark the time, till, feeling more and more the inner urge of gayety, people spring to their feet and begin the dance. There is no combination of things coming by way of sight alone that could produce the same response and pleasure of feelings. The deaf person seeing the dancing and gayety would experience no change. He might enter into it as best he could, but his feelings would be but little different from those that he would have if he sat at his desk casting up accounts. His dancing could not produce the pleasure, the enjoyment of dancing, any more than merely seeing it could do. Only sound can do that. But unseal his ears and in a flash you have unsealed his feelings. From the consciousness of none in particular, he passes to the ripple and thrill of emotion— animation — life, and its urge to bodily expression. Sound has created a mood.

It cannot be claimed that because it is a highly specialized sound it appeals to some finer sense and inspires response only on that ground, for the function extends in the opposite direction — sound produces feelings of distress and irritation. A scientific writer points out that we can see with indifference the writhings of a suffering animal that is still, but that, if there are cries of pain, it produces emotion at once. We are distressed. In reports of terrible marine disasters, it is almost never said by people that they can never forget the sights they saw, but always that they can never forget the cries of the drowning. Likewise there are certain sounds which distinctly irritate. The hum of a mosquito excites feelings of irritation altogether in excess of seeing it or feeling it.

But the salient point between the two extremes is that sound, in its simple common forms, possesses its own degree of power to produce a measure of response which corresponds to the ordinary cheerfulness of normal life.

Although one would hardly hesitate to say that the excess of the blind man’s calamity over that of the deaf man is sufficient to over-balance this elemental function of sound to produce moods, yet the universal fact remains that the blind are more cheerful than the deaf. If this be really true, then it must be because the blind are the involuntary subjects of a cause and effect so deeply fixed in the process of man’s mental evolution that it cannot be entirely overpowered even by blindness.

Now it follows that the absence of sound is the very large withdrawal of the natural arouser of feelings, leaving in their stead an unbroken dullness or lack of cheerfulness, — for there is no possibility of auto-excitation in place of the external stimulus, — as was illustrated in the instance of dancing. Nor is there any general level or original capital of feelings which exist if just let alone, for dullness or depression does not mean (barring a sense of sadness) various feelings of a poor quality, so much as no feelings — negativeness. Hence the deaf man’s depression.

Now then, it proved to be that this specific relation of sound to feeling was the ‘elemental something’ in the background, the understanding of which did produce surprisingly helpful results. Just why learning something of a cause should mitigate an effect is not easy to explain, even if this were the place to attempt a ‘psycho-analysis.’ But it has been discovered and accepted as the underlying principle in certain modern methods of treatment of deeply disturbed psychological conditions. Its discoverer and upbuilder ‘showed that when patients were made conversant with the cause of their symptoms, and the reason explained to them, they got well.’

In my own case, it seemed as though the power to set out one element or cause of depression made it appear less hopeless than when everything was concealed in the blind whole. Here was definiteness, and there is nothing more paralyzing to the human mind and heart than the idea of the unalterably, inherently mysterious—the thing without a cause.

Though not always recognizing the fact, my footsteps from here on were forward rather than backward. I had gained an impersonal view of the situation — the vision of a law rather than a fate. I did not know what might lie before me, but, added to what familiarity I may have had with matters psychological, my experience in finding out what depression was, or rather why it was, had given me a glimpse into possibilities — into new heights and depths. If I had lost a world I had discovered that new ones might be created. It came to me that after all mind is master — experience the absolute teacher.

Having come thus far, the first effort of the deaf person must be to find and establish for himself a new philosophy or system of life. Under ordinary circumstances one does not think very much about a philosophy of life. Life flows in from full channels and brings all unconsciously its own code of living. But when one is cut off from mental association with his fellows, when he is denied all that comes from lectures, concerts, plays, church, music, conversation, — the subconsciousness even of the murmurous world about him, — the rain on the window, the fire on the hearth, — it is apparent to the most dull that there is a far-reaching change in his world. Life has been folded back upon itself and a new living-basis must be set up.

III

My own philosophy speedily resolved itself into three parts —work, study, and play; three familiar things, which yet served well the deeper mission to which they had been called.

But before even this, stands the pertinent question of reëstablishing in some degree the lost means of communication. No matter what you may think the impossibility of this to be, it must be done, because, with the best intentions of people in making things easy, the exigencies of life will require of you much the same that they always have required. Therefore, you should not hesitate to adopt any reasonable devices which have been invented to assist in this object. They serve their purpose better than nothing, and even if they do not prove indispensable to you, you will often find people who seem so to regard them when they are talking to you. This inclination you should be prompt to humor. Anything that makes for agreeableness or saves embarrassment must be favored, for one of the small surprises of deafness is to discover that there are people who are really embarrassed to know how to ‘manage’ a deaf person. Strange as it may seem, it is often you, the handicapped, who must come to the rescue, and your capacity for doing it will be one of your assets.

But speaking from experience, the best of all methods is to begin from the start to learn to understand the lips. I know many people are dismayed at mention of the idea, but I think it is because they regard it as among the most difficult of all things to accomplish. This is not so. Any person with a reasonably quick mind can do more for himself by persistent effort in lipreading than by any other possible means. I do not mean learning it by going to a school where it is taught, or by professional instruction, although both appeal to me. I mean, rather, by keen observation, careful effort, and persistent practice. Everything is in favor of lip-reading. Facility increases with time; it is quiet, unawkward, and dignified. If it can be attained, it is an accomplishment par excellence. Of course, you will find those whose talking is hopelessly blind. Their lips are immobile and their articulation behind half-shut teeth. Give them up, together with that other class who are averse to making the slightest effort, and will make no difference between you and any one else. There are times, however, if one is thrown among these people, when it is impossible to follow this advice — when one must know what is said. For these the tiny ivory pad of four or five leaves with little pencil attached is an expedient solution. It can be tucked into the belt or vest-pocket out of sight. I have seen tense situations smoothed out by its timely appearance.

The question of work and business in the case of the deaf person is complex. It may be the most essential thing confronting him — a necessity. The work one has been accustomed to may seem to be greatly interfered with, if not impossible to continue in. This feeling should not be yielded to so long as there is a reasonable possibility of continuing in it. You need its familiarity, its friendliness. Certain workers, it would seem, must change their occupation, but I have known a teacher to hold his position as active principal of a boys’ school for years after he had become very deaf. Little by little he worked others into the gaps he could not fill, and he played a certain rôle with force and dignity until his accidental death. I know a business man who successfully carries on a large and important business, involving many deals in properties and money, who has been deaf for twenty-five years — the deafest person I have ever seen. Standing in a railway station with him one day, I asked if he could hear the tremendous ringing and clanging of the engines around us. He smilingly shook his head. Then, being an old friend, I asked how deeply it troubled him to be so deaf. To my astonishment he wrote,

‘I never think of it. I have to be so busy in my business, looking out for the other fellow and the rights of the deal, that I don’t have a minute for anything else.’ This man had a world of his own.

Whatever you are doing, don’t give it up unless forced to. The public forgets things after a while if it gets its money’s worth. And, above all, count yourself among the blest if you can work, and work hard. Work has specific healing for your trouble, although on other grounds I am its disciple — a pilgrim to its shrine. I had always liked my two hands inordinately for what they could do, but when, long ago, I learned how intimately and fundamentally the hands had had to do in primal ages with the evolution of the brain of earliest homo, when he yet struggled with his eoliths and his unperfected thumbs, I reverenced them anew. The power of the hand visibly to re-create the mental conception of a Raphael and a Praxiteles is indefinable and exquisite. The hands hold the sublimity of the spirit to the power of the flesh.

Furthermore, I would advise any deaf person to earn money whether there is real need of it or not. It is the practical measure of capability,—a quality in which the deaf need reassuring, — and it replaces old aims and interests which may have been lost. It tends to rehabilitate ambition and selfconfidence — its largest good, perhaps, lying in its moral tonic force.

If you are at liberty to divide your time so that study may play an equal part with work, then you hold passports to all kinds of pleasure and profit.

It is undeniable that people go through the world so careless and unseeing that some of the best of it escapes on every hand. The knowledge and truth which lies nearest to us we do not know is there, and we do not know how to lay hold upon it. It is under our feet, in the air above our heads, not to mention within ourselves. But study and observation open the doors of the mind through which all things come trooping in.

These studies may be grave or gay, simple or profound. I well remember my first experience with one of the wasps — Pompilus and her paralyzed spider. About all the knowledge I then had of the subject was a little I had read in one of Darwin’s books long before. It was just enough so that I recognized what I had run across. The subject had greatly interested me at the time of reading, but it had seemed a far-off science-lore past attaining, so that when I realized that this was the same wonderful thing, I was breathless with excitement.

The strange little worlds in your back yard and along the country road are as absorbingly exciting, if you but see them understandingly, as those which have been sought out on the other side of the earth. And they are waiting only for two eyes and a mind to explore their secrets. Ears are an utter superfluity. It does not matter that others have found out long ago all that you may discover, — although there is a whole apocalypse of things that the wise ones do not yet know, — they are a discovery to you.

Therefore, in work and study alike, so-called hobbies serve an admirable purpose for us. I own to having pursued half a dozen of them, long and ardently — from working on the wood of old mahogany pieces, which now stand burnished and glowing among my earthly possessions, to digging in ancient shell-pits for chipped flints and bone fish-hooks. And the beauty of all these doings is that they are as profitable as they are fascinating. Their pursuit is a constant source of new understanding which lures thought far from one’s self. They teach the impersonal habit, — and some day you will find that you have learned, among many other things, how to forget yourself.

Last, but far from least, is the question of recreation and play. It is one of the perplexing problems, for while there are unnumbered resources for work and occupation, deafness paralyzes the sources of pleasure. Objectively, they all exist, but subjectively, you have no way of experiencing them. And yet, pleasure cannot be dispensed with — that way danger lies. Its persistent lack grows into definite distress, and the deaf person, like others, must have, to use the words of a writer already quoted, ‘some little fun every day, and some human society.’ The small pleasures which all people seek are a natural necessity, and very distinct from any deaf person’s ‘ many resources,’ which people are often fond of referring to as though they were a sufficient substitute. His play must mean change, anticipation, something outside himself — in short, just what it means to other people.

There is one field, however, which almost universally is left unaffected by deafness — the matter of games of competition and chance. Tennis, cards, golf, and similar things, give the chance of pleasure in the explicit sense of the word. In the competition lies the essence of association, and their further result is even doubled. They are not only keenly enjoyable in themselves, being sources which hearing people constantly seek for that purpose, but being the one activity which is not affected for one by deafness, the relief and change in its exercise is intense. One can be sufficiently skillful so that he need not feel that his deafness mars the pleasure of others, — although it would be indeed a striking selfishness in others who would have their fun perfect always at the expense of your having none — who intentionally would not share themselves and their pleasure reasonably to your need.

Nevertheless, it is probably better to recognize the fact now and then, like any sensible person, that the world is not wholly lovely — that a selfish and designing individual is an indisputable reality sometimes. This does not impeach the general kindness; but to be cognizant of such a person and of his real aim when it comes to you, makes for surer self-confidence and better judgment in playing your own rôle in regard to him. It can be done with entire equanimity, if not with a degree of interest, for the reading of character in its exceeding diversity of composition has long been not the least interesting of studies. Idealism is no abstraction, but the world as it is must not be forgotten.

The central thought which comes from my experience with deafness is, that remedy — recompense — here as elsewhere, is the natural law — that nature seeks always to balance itself. The only irreparable disaster in deafness is that one which would despoil the spirit — the will; and here again, as was shown in depression, it is within the personality, within the bounds and terms of our own understanding, that exist the laws which reharmonize the discordant condition and reinvest the mind with its conscious power to dominate the forces and events of life.