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THE ART OF SEEING

By

ALDOUS HUXLEY

1974
CHATTO  &  WINDUS

LONDON

PUBLISHED   BY

Chatto & Windus

LONDON

•

Clarke, Irwin & Co. Ltd.

TORONTO

ISBN O 7011  0788 X

First published 1943

Second impression 1943

Third impression 1943

Fourth impression 1943

Fifth impression 1944

Sixth impression 1948

Seventh impression 1937

Eighth impression 1963

First issued in this edition 1971

Second impression 1974

Applications regarding translation rights in any
work by Aldous Huxley should be addressed to
Chatto & Windus, 40 William IV Street, London,

W.C.2

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the prior permission of Chatto & Windus Ltd.

© Mrs. Laura Huxley 1943

Printed in Great Britain by

Redwood Burn Limited, Trowbridge & Esher

CONTENTS

PREFACE

A

T sixteen, I had a violent attack of keratitis punctata, which left me (after eighteen months of near-blindness, during which I had to depend on Braille for my reading and a guide for my walking) with one eye just capable of light perception, and the other with enough vision to permit of my detecting the two-hundred-foot letter on the Snellen Chart at ten feet. My inability to see was mainly due to the presence of opacities in the cornea; but this condition was complicated by hyperopia and astigmat­ism. For the first few years, my doctors advised me to do my reading with the aid of a powerful hand magnifying glass. But later on I was promoted to spectacles. With the aid of these I was able to recognize the seventy-foot line at ten feet and to read tolerably well—provided always that I kept my better pupil dilated with atropine, so that I might see round a particu­larly heavy patch of opacity at the centre of the cornea. True, a measure of strain and fatigue was always present, and there were occasions when I was overcome by that sense of complete physical and mental exhaustion which only eye-strain can produce.   Still, I was grateful to be able to see as well as I could.

Things went on in this way until the year 1939, when, in spite of greatly strengthened glasses, I found the task of reading in­creasingly difficult and fatiguing. There could be no doubt of it: my capacity to see was steadily and quite rapidly failing. But just as I was wondering apprehensively what on earth I should do, if reading were to become impossible, I happened to hear of a method of visual re-education and of a teacher who was said to make use of this method with conspicuous success. Educa­tion sounded harmless enough and, since optical glass was no longer doing me any good, I decided to take the plunge. With­in a couple of months I was reading without spectacles and, what was better still, without strain and fatigue.  The chronic tensions, and the occasional spells of complete exhaustion, were things of the past. Moreover, there were definite signs that the opacity in the cornea, which had remained unchanged for upwards of twenty-five years, was beginning to clear up. At the present time, my vision, though very far from normal, is about twice as good as it used to be when I wore spectacles, and before I had learnt the art of seeing; and the opacity has cleared sufficiently to permit the worse eye, which for years could do no more than distinguish light from darkness, to recognize the ten-foot line on the chart at one foot.

It is, first of all, to repay a debt of gratitude that I have written this little book—gratitude to the pioneer of visual education, the late Dr. W. H. Bates, and to his disciple, Mrs. Margaret D. Corbett, to whose skill as a teacher I owe the improvement in my own vision.

A number of other books on visual education have been pub­lished—notably Dr. Bates's own, Perfect Sight Without Glasses (New York, 1920), Mrs. Corbett's How to Improve Your Eyes (Los Angeles, 1938) and The Improvement of Sight by Natural Methods, by C. S. Price, M.B.E., D.O. (London, 1934). All have their merits; but in none (of those, at least, that I have read) has an attempt been made to do what I have tried to do in the present volume: namely, to correlate the methods of visual edu­cation with the findings of modern psychology and critical phil­osophy. My purpose in making this correlation is to demon­strate the essential reasonableness of a method, which turns out to be nothing more nor less than the practical application to the problems of vision of certain theoretical principles, universally accepted as true.

Why, it may be asked, have orthodox ophthalmologists failed to make these applications of universally accepted principles? The answer is clear. Ever since ophthalmology became a science, its practitioners have been obsessively preoccupied with only one aspect of the total, complex process of seeing—the physiological. They have paid attention exclusively to eyes, not at all to the mind which makes use of the eyes to see with. I have been treated by men of the highest eminence in their profession; but never once did they so much as faintly hint that there might be a mental side to vision, or that there might be wrong ways of using the eyes and mind as well as right ways, unnatural and abnormal modes of visual functioning as well as natural and nor­mal ones. After checking the acute infection in my eyes, which they did with the greatest skill, they gave me some artificial lenses and let me go. Whether I used my mind and be-spectacled eyes well or badly, and what might be the effect upon my vision of improper use, were to them, as to practically all other orthodox ophthalmologists, matters of perfect indifference. To Dr. Bates, on the contrary, these things were not matters of indifference; and because they were not, he worked out, through long years of experiment and clinical practice, his peculiar method of visual education. That this method was essentially sound, is proved by its efficacy.

My own case is in no way unique; thousands of other sufferers from defects of vision have benefited by following the simple rules of that Art of Seeing which we owe to Bates and his followers. To make this Art more widely known is the final purpose of the present volume.

M

edicus curat, natura sanat—the doctor treats, nature heals. The old aphorism sums up the whole scope and purpose of medicine, which is to provide sick organisms with the internal and external conditions most favourable to the exercise of their own self-regulative and restorative powers. If there were no vis medicatrix naturae, no natural healing powers, medi­cine would be helpless, and every small derangement would either kill outright or settle down into chronic disease.

When conditions are favourable, sick organisms tend to re­cover through their own inherent powers of self-healing. If they do not recover, it means either that the case is hopeless, or that the conditions are not favourable—in other words, that the medi­cal treatment being applied is failing to achieve what an adequate treatment ought to achieve.

ORDINARY TREATMENT OF DEFECTIVE SIGHT

In the light of these general principles let us consider the cur­rent medical treatment of defects of vision. In the great majority of cases the only treatment consists in fitting the patient with artificial lenses, designed to correct the particular error of re­fraction which is held to be responsible for the defect. Medicus curat; and in most cases the patient is rewarded by an immediate improvement in vision. But in the meanwhile, what about Nature and her healing process? Do glasses eliminate the causes of defective vision? Do the organs of sight tend to revert to normal functioning as the result of the treatment with artificial lenses? The answer to these questions is, No. Artificial lenses neutralize the symptoms, but do not get rid of the causes of de­fective vision.  And so far from improving, eyes fitted with these devices tend to grow progressively weaker and to require pro­gressively stronger lenses for the correction of their symptoms. In a word, medicus curat, natura NON sanat. From this we can draw one of two conclusions: either defects in the organs of seeing are incurable, and can only be palliated by mechanical neutralization of symptoms; or else something is radically wrong with the current methods of treatment.

Orthodox opinion accepts the first and more pessimistic alter­natives, and insists that the mechanical palliation of symptoms is the only kind of treatment to which defective organs of vision will respond. (I am leaving out of account all cases of more or less acute disease of the eyes, which are treated by surgery and medication, and confining myself to those much more common-place visual defects now treated by means of lenses.)

CURE OR PALLIATION OF SYMPTOMS?

If orthodox opinion is right—if the organs of vision are in-capable of curing themselves, and if their defects can only be palliated by mechanical devices—then the eyes must be totally different in kind from other parts of the body. Given favourable conditions, all other organs tend to free themselves from their defects. Not so the eyes. When they show symptoms of weak­ness, it is foolish, according to orthodox theory, to make any serious effort to get rid of the causes of those symptoms; it is a waste of time even to try to discover a treatment which will assist nature in accomplishing its normal task of healing. Defective eyes are, ex hypothesi, practically incurable; they lack the vis medicatrix naturae. The only thing that ophthalmological science can do for them is to provide them with the purely mechanical means for neutralizing their symptoms. The only qualifications to this strange theory come from those who have made it their business to look into external conditions of seeing. Here, for example, are some relevant remarks taken from the book Seeing and Human Welfare by Dr. Matthew Luckiesh, Director of the General Electric Company's Lighting Research Laboratory. Eyeglasses (those 'valuable crutches,' as Dr. Luckiesh calls them) 'counteract effects of heredity, age, and abuse; they do not deal with causes.' 'Suppose that crippled eyes could be transformed into crippled legs. What a heart-rending parade we would wit­ness on a busy street! Nearly every other person would go limping by. Many would be on crutches and some on wheel chairs. How many of these defects of the eye are due to poor conditions for seeing, that is, to indifference towards seeing? Statistics are not available, but a knowledge of seeing and its re­quirements indicates that most of them are preventable and most of the remainder can be improved or arrested by adequate and proper conditions.' And again, 'even the refractive defects and other abnormalities of eyes induced by abuses are not necessarily permanent. When we become ill, Nature does her part, if we do ours, towards getting well. Eyes have various recuperative powers, at least to some degree. Reducing their abuse by im­proving seeing conditions is always helpful, and there are many cases on record where great improvement has followed on this procedure. Indeed, without correction of the abuse, the disorder generally becomes progressively worse.' These are encouraging words that leave us with the hope that we are to be given a de­scription of some new and genuinely aetiological treatment of visual defects, to take the place of the purely symptomatic treat­ment at present in vogue. But this hope is only imperfectly ful­filled. ' Poor lighting,' Dr. Luckiesh goes on, ' is the most im­portant and universal cause of eye-strain, often leading to pro­gressive defects and disorders.' His whole book is an elaboration of this theme. Let me hasten to add that, within its limitations, it is an admirable book. To those suffering from defects of vision the importance of good lighting is very great indeed; and one can only be grateful to Dr. Luckiesh for his scientific clari­fication of the meaning 'good lighting' in terms of standard, measurable entities such as foot-candles. One's only complaint is that foot-candles are not enough. In treating other parts of the organism doctors are not content to ameliorate merely the external conditions of functioning; they also seek to improve the internal conditions, to work directly on the physiological en­vironment of the sick organ as well as on the physical environ­ment outside the body. Thus when legs are crippled, doctors refuse to let their patients rely indefinitely on crutches. Nor do they consider that the laying down of rules for avoiding acci­dents constitutes sufficient treatment for the condition of being crippled. On the contrary, they regard the use of crutches as merely a palliative and temporary expedient, and while paying attention to external conditions, they also do their best to im­prove the internal conditions of the defective part, so that nature maybe helped to do its work of healing. Some of these measures, such as rest, massage, applications of heat and light, make no appeal to the patient's mind, but are aimed directly at the affected organs, their purpose being to relax, to increase circulation and to preserve mobility. Other measures are educational and in­volve, on the patient's part, a co-ordination of mind and body. By means of this appeal to the psychological factor astonishing results are often obtained. A good teacher, using the right tech­nique, can often educate a victim of accident or paralysis into gradual recovery of his lost functions, and through that recovery of function, into the re-establishment of the health and integrity of the defective organ. If such things can be done for crippled legs, why should it not be possible to do something analogous for defective eyes? To this question the orthodox theory pro­vides no answer—merely takes it for granted that the defective eye is incurable and cannot, in spite of its peculiarly intimate relationship with the psyche, be re-educated towards normality by any process of mind-body co-ordination.

The orthodox theory is, on the face of it, so implausible, so intrinsically unlikely to be true, that one can only be astonished that it should be so generally and so unquestioningly accepted. Nevertheless, such is the force of habit and authority that we all do accept it. At the present time it is rejected only by those who have personal reasons for knowing it to be untrue.  I myself happen to be one of these. By the greatest of good fortune I was given the opportunity to discover by personal experience that eyes do not lack the vis medicatrix naturae, that the palliation of symptoms is not the only treatment for defective vision, that the function of sight can be re-educated towards normality by appropriate body-mind co-ordination, and finally that the improvement in functioning is accompanied by an improvement in the condition of the damaged organ. This personal experience has been confirmed by my observation of m...