Search out thy blindness. It holdeth
Riches past computing.
Helen Keller, A Chant of Darkness

Most people know the story of Helen Keller (1880-1968). Struck totally deaf and blind by a mysterious illness at nineteen months, Helen spent five years in frustrating isolation. Through the efforts of her persistent teacher, Anne Sullivan, Helen learned how to communicate through her hands. Through language, the world was opened to Helen, and Helen to the world.

Helen’s brilliance and her love for life are evident in her writings. Her second book, The World I Live In, first published in 1908, addresses a variety of subjects, but most notably, her perception of the world apart from the dominant senses of sight and sound.

One would think that her imagination and experience would be limited by her disability. Quite the contrary, her descriptions of the world are rich, full, and captivating – an amazing feat for one who never saw or heard a single thing in her life. Her access to the world came exclusively through touch, smell, and taste. These limited senses, combined with her imagination and language, allowed her to experience the world in a unique way. They allowed her to see, even though blind.

The Touch of a Hand

Lacking sight and sound, Helen’s dominant sense was touch. Skin, the means of touch, is the largest organ in the body. Even though all skin is capable of receiving sensations, the sense is primarily exercised through the use of the hands. For Helen Keller, the hands were her window to the world. While those of us with sight and hearing generally praise the beauty introduced through the eyes (a gorgeous sunset) or the pleasant sounds conveyed by the ears (a magnificent symphony), Helen relishes in the knowledge gained through the hands.

Conventional wisdom would state that allowing the blind to lead invites disaster. We are all familiar with the aphorism, “the blind leading the blind.” But, in this case, the blind is leading those of us with sight who, in spite of our abilities, may still very well remain blind. Not all who have eyes truly see! Not all who have ears truly hear!

Aware of her limitations, but perhaps even more aware of the limitations of her readers who rely solely upon their sight to engage the world, Helen invites us to allow her – the blind – to lead. She writes, “I am glad to take you by the hand and lead you along an untrodden way into a world where the hand is supreme” (9). Aware that “[t]he blind are not supposed to be the best of guides” she promises to “guide [us] through the land of darkness and silence” (9-10).

Helen thinks very highly of touch: “Paradise is attained by touch; for in touch is all love and intelligence” (9). Her imagination is fueled by the impressions gathered by her sense of touch: “My world is built of touch-sensations, devoid of physical color and sound; but without color and sound it breathes and throbs with life” (11).

Unlike sight, which allows one to grasp the “big picture” all at once, touch is limited by its distance to the object of its perception: “My fingers cannot, of course, get the impression of a large whole at a glance; but I feel the parts, and my mind puts them together” (13). This demands that Helen receive an impression and then, through her imagination, place it within a larger context. “So you see I am not shut out from the region of the beautiful, though my hand cannot perceive the brilliant colors in the sunset or on the mountain, or reach into the blue depths of the sky” (12).

Helen’s limitations allowed her to see something that is often missed by those equipped to see and hear. This is most evident in Helen’s observations concerning the use of “hand” in the Holy Bible. She writes, “I understand perfectly how the Psalmist can lift up his voice with strength and gladness, singing, ‘I will put my trust in the Lord at all times, and his hand shall uphold me, and I shall dwell in safety’” (16).

Most touching is Helen’s survey of “the touch of the hand” throughout the entirety of the Bible:

The touch of the hand is in every chapter of the Bible. Why, you could almost rewrite Exodus as the story of the hand. Everything is done by the hand of the Lord and of Moses. The oppression of the Hebrews is translated thus: “The hand of Pharaoh was heavy upon the Hebrews.” Their departure out of the land is told in these vivid words: “The Lord brought the children of Israel out of the house of bondage with a strong hand and a stretched-out arm.” At the stretching out of the hand of Moses the waters of the Red Sea part and stand all on a heap. When the Lord lifts his hand in anger, thousands perish in the wilderness. Every act, every decree in the history of Israel, as indeed in the history of the human race, is sanctioned by the hand. Is it not used in the great moments of swearing, blessing, cursing, smiting, agreeing, marrying, building, destroying? Its sacredness is in the law that no sacrifice is valid unless the sacrificer lay his hand upon the head of the victim. The congregation lay their hands on the heads of those who are sentenced to death. How terrible the dumb condemnation of their hands must be to the condemned! When Moses builds the altar on Mount Sinai, he is commanded to use no tool, but rear it with his own hands. Earth, sea, sky, man, and all lower animals are holy unto the Lord because he has formed them with his own hand. When the Psalmist considers the heavens and the earth, he exclaims: “What is man, O Lord, that thou art mindful of him? For thou hast made him to have dominion over the works of thy hands.” The supplicating gesture of the hand always accompanies the spoken prayer, and with clean hands goes the pure heart.

Christ comforted and blessed and healed and wrought many miracles with his hands. He touched the eyes of the blind, and they were opened. When Jairus sought him, overwhelmed with grief, Jesus went and laid his hands on the ruler’s daughter, and she awoke from the sleep of death to her father’s love. You also remember how he healed the crooked woman. He said to her, “Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity,” and he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God. (25-26)

One of Helen’s descriptions of life perceived through the hands is so beautiful that it borders on the poetic:

Hold out your hands to feel the luxury of the sunbeams. Press the soft blossoms against your cheek, and finger their graces of form, their delicate mutability of shape, their pliancy and freshness. Expose your face to the aerial floods that sweep the heavens, “inhale great draughts of space,” wonder, wonder at the wind’s unwearied activity. Pile note on note the infinite music that flows increasingly to your soul from the tactual sonorities of a thousand branches and tumbling waters. How can the world be shriveled when this most profound, emotional sense, touch, is faithful to its service? I am sure that if a fairy bade me choose between the sense of sight and that of touch, I would not part with the warm, endearing contact of human hands or the wealth of form, the mobility and fullness that press into my palms. (54-55)

Her description begins with a call to immerse oneself in the beauty of this earth through the sense of touch. Her joy in this is so great that she concludes with the most exalted thing she could say about her disability, namely, that if she had the choice between touch and sight, she would choose touch.

A Barren Stare in an Enchanted World

So great is Helen’s perception of this world through touch that she laments those who possess sight and sound and yet are unable to appreciate what these dominant senses offer. For her, it is possible to see yet remain blind; to hear but remain deaf.

I have walked with people whose eyes are full of light, but who see nothing in wood, sea, or sky, nothing in city streets, nothing in books. What a witless masquerade is this seeing! It were better far to sail forever in the night of blindness, with sense and feeling and mind, than to be content with the mere act of seeing. They have the sunset, the morning skies, the purple of distant hills, yet their souls voyage through this enchanted world with a barren stare. (56)

The full use of the five senses may actually blind us to the awareness of a deeper reality. “I began to suspect that the eye is not a very reliable instrument after all, and I felt as one who had been restored to equality with others, glad, not because the senses avail them so little, but because in God’s eternal world, mind and spirit avail so much” (135). These words echo St. Paul’s declaration that “we walk by faith and not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). To him, what we see is not all there is. There is a realm of reality that eludes and evades those who rely only upon sight to navigate this world.

So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)

That which is fading – the reality accessed by sight alone – is not ultimate. The spiritual realm is the place where we are truly integrated as whole beings. What we lack in our senses is made complete in the Spirit.

More Than Meets the Eye

There is more than meets the eye. Sight alone can be deceptive. We may think we are seeing when we are not. With eyes wide open, we may prove ourselves to be blind if we are not open to the Spirit of God. Our gaze upon the world may merely be a “barren stare in an enchanted world.” Delightful joys, amazing beauty, and deep meaning are available through language and imagination. In religious language, it is available by the means of faith. Jesus said it best, “Blessed are you who have not seen, but believe” (John 20:29).

We could use the correction of the French philosopher, Denis Diderot, whom Helen quotes approvingly: “I found that of the senses, the eye is the most superficial, the ear the most arrogant, smell the most voluptuous, taste the most superstitious and fickle, touch the most profound and the most philosophical” (53).

Quotes excerpted from The World I Live In by Helen Keller published in 1908
Review © Richard J. Vincent, 2006