To Whom This May Come, With the Eyes Shut, The Blindman's World
To Whom This May Come, With the Eyes Shut, The Blindman's WorldTHE BLINDMAN'S WORLDWith the Eyes ShutTo Whom This May ComeCopyright
To Whom This May Come, With the Eyes Shut, The Blindman's World
Edward Bellamy
THE BLINDMAN'S WORLD
THE narrative to which this note is introductory was found
among the papers of the late Professor S. Erastus Larrabee, and, as
an acquaintance of the gentleman to whom they were bequeathed, I
was requested to prepare it for publication. This turned out a very
easy task, for the document proved of so extraordinary a character
that, if published at all, it should obviously be without change.
It appears that the professor did really, at one time in his life,
have an attack of vertigo, or something of the sort, under
circumstances similar to those described by him, and to that extent
his narrative may be founded on fact. How soon it shifts from that
foundation, or whether it does at all, the reader must conclude for
himself. It appears certain that the professor never related to any
one, while living, the stranger features of the experience here
narrated, but this might have been merely from fear that his
standing as a man of science would be thereby injured.THE PROFESSOR S NARRATIVEAt the time of the experience of which I am about to write, I
was professor of astronomy and higher mathematics at Abercrombie
College. Most astronomers have a specialty, and mine was the study
of the planet Mars, our nearest neighbor but one in the Sun's
little family. When no important celestial phenomena in other
quarters demanded attention, it was on the ruddy disc of Mars that
my telescope was oftenest focused. I was never weary of tracing the
outlines of its continents and seas, its capes and islands, its
bays and straits, its lakes and mountains. With intense interest I
watched from week to week of the Martial winter the advance of the
polar ice-cap toward the equator, and its corresponding retreat in
the summer; testifying across the gulf of space as plainly as
written words to the existence on that orb of a climate like our
own. A specialty is always in danger of becoming an infatuation,
and my interest in Mars, at the time of which I write, had grown to
be more than strictly scientific. The impression of the nearness of
this planet, heightened by the wonderful distinctness of its
geography as seen through a powerful telescope, appeals strongly to
the imagination of the astronomer. On fine evenings I used to spend
hours, not so much critically observing as brooding over its
radiant surface, till I could almost persuade myself that I saw the
breakers dashing on the bold shore of Kepler Land, and heard the
muffled thunder of avalanches descending the snow-clad mountains of
Mitchell. No earthly landscape had the charm to hold my gaze of
that far-off planet, whose oceans, to the unpracticed eye, seem but
darker, and its continents lighter, spots and bands.Astronomers have agreed in declaring that Mars is undoubtedly
habitable by beings like ourselves, but, as may be supposed, I was
not in a mood to be satisfied with considering it merely habitable.
I allowed no sort of question that it was inhabited. What manner of
beings these inhabitants might be I found a fascinating
speculation. The variety of types appearing in mankind even on this
small Earth makes it most presumptuous to assume that the denizens
of different planets may not be characterized by diversities far
profounder. Wherein such diversities, coupled with a general
resemblance to man, might consist, whether in mere physical
differences or in different mental laws, in the lack of certain of
the great passional motors of men or the possession of quite
others, were weird themes of never-failing attractions for my mind.
The El Dorado visions with which the virgin mystery of the New
World inspired the early Spanish explorers were tame and prosaic
compared with the speculations which it was perfectly legitimate to
indulge, when the problem was the conditions of life on another
planet.It was the time of the year when Mars is most favorably
situated for observation, and, anxious not to lose an hour of the
precious season, I had spent the greater part of several successive
nights in the observatory. I believed that I had made some original
observations as to the trend of the coast of Kepler Land between
Lagrange Peninsula and Christie Bay, and it was to this spot that
my observations were particularly directed.On the fourth night other work detained me from the
observing-chair till after midnight. When I had adjusted the
instrument and took my first look at Mars, I remember being unable
to restrain a cry of admiration. The planet was fairly dazzling. It
seemed nearer and larger than I had ever seen it before, and its
peculiar ruddiness more striking. In thirty years of observations,
I recall, in fact, no occasion when the absence of exhalations in
our atmosphere has coincided with such cloudlessness in that of
Mars as on that night. I could plainly make out the white masses of
vapor at the opposite edges of the lighted disc, which are the
mists of its dawn and evening. The snowy mass of Mount Hall over
against Kepler Land stood out with wonderful clearness, and I could
unmistakably detect the blue tint of the ocean of De La Rue, which
washes its base,--a feat of vision often, indeed, accomplished by
star-gazers, though I had never done it to my complete satisfaction
before.I was impressed with the idea that if I ever made an original
discovery in regard to Mars, it would be on that evening, and I
believed that I should do it. I trembled with mingled exultation
and anxiety, and was obliged to pause to recover my self-control.
Finally, I placed my eye to the eye-piece, and directed my gaze
upon the portion of the planet in which I was especially
interested. My attention soon became fixed and absorbed much beyond
my wont, when observing, and that itself implied no ordinary degree
of abstraction. To all mental intents and purposes I was on Mars.
Every faculty, every susceptibility of sense and intellect, seemed
gradually to pass into the eye, and become concentrated in the act
of gazing. Every atom of nerve and will power combined in the
strain to see a little, and yet a little, and yet a little,
clearer, farther, deeper.The next thing I knew I was on the bed that stood in a corner
of the observing-room, half raised on an elbow, and gazing intently
at the door. It was broad daylight. Half a dozen men, including
several of the professors and a doctor from the village, were
around me. Some were trying to make me lie down, others were asking
me what I wanted, while the doctor was urging me to drink some
whiskey. Mechanically repelling their offices, I pointed to the
door and ejaculated, "President Byxbee--coming," giving expression
to the one idea which my dazed mind at that moment contained. And
sure enough, even as I spoke the door opened, and the venerable
head of the college, somewhat blown with climbing the steep
stairway, stood on the threshold. With a sensation of prodigious
relief, I fell back on my pillow.It appeared that I had swooned while in the observing-chair,
the night before, and had been found by the janitor in the morning,
my head fallen forward on the telescope, as if still observing, but
my body cold, rigid, pulseless, and apparently dead.In a couple of days I was all right again, and should soon
have forgotten the episode but for a very interesting conjecture
which had suggested itself in connection with it. This was nothing
less than that, while I lay in that swoon, I was in a conscious
state outside and independent of the body, and in that state
received impressions and exercised perceptive powers. For this
extraordinary theory I had no other evidence than the fact of my
knowledge in the moment of awaking that President Byxbee was coming
up the stairs. But slight as this clue was, it seemed to me
unmistakable in its significance. That knowledge was certainly in
my mind on the instant of arousing from the swoon. It certainly
could not have been there before I fell into the swoon. I must
therefore have gained it in the mean time; that is to say, I must
have been in a conscious, percipient state while my body was
insensible.If such had been the case, I reasoned that it was altogether
unlikely that the trivial impression as to President Byxbee had
been the only one which I had received in that state. It was far
more probable that it had remained over in my mind, on waking from
the swoon, merely because it was the latest of a series of
impressions received while outside the body. That these impressions
were of a kind most strange and startling, seeing that they were
those of a disembodied soul exercising faculties more spiritual
than those of the body, I could not doubt. The desire to know what
they had been grew upon me, till it became a longing which left me
no repose. It seemed intolerable that I should have secrets from
myself, that my soul should withhold its experiences from my
intellect. I would gladly have consented that the acquisitions of
half my waking lifetime should be blotted out, if so be in exchange
I might be shown the record of what I had seen and known during
those hours of which my waking memory showed no trace. None the
less for the conviction of its hopelessness, but rather all the
more, as the perversity of our human nature will have it, the
longing for this forbidden lore grew on me, till the hunger of Eve
in the Garden was mine.Constantly brooding over a desire that I felt to be vain,
tantalized by the possession of a clue which only mocked me, my
physical condition became at length affected. My health was
disturbed and my rest at night was broken. A habit of walking in my
sleep, from which I had not suffered since childhood, recurred, and
caused me frequent inconvenience. Such had been, in general, my
condition for some time, when I awoke one morning with the
strangely weary sensation by which my body usually betrayed the
secret of the impositions put upon it in sleep, of which otherwise
I should often have suspected nothing. In going into the study
connected with my chamber, I found a number of freshly written
sheets on the desk. Astonished that any one should have been in my
rooms while I slept, I was astounded, on looking more closely, to
observe that the handwriting was my own. How much more than
astounded I was on reading the matter that had been set down, the
reader may judge if he shall peruse it. For these written sheets
apparently contained the longed-for but despaired-of record of
those hours when I was absent from the body. They were the lost
chapter of my life; or rather, not lost at all, for it had been no
part of my waking life, but a stolen chapter,--stolen from that
sleep-memory on whose mysterious tablets may well be inscribed
tales as much more marvelous than this as this is stranger than
most stories.It will be remembered that my last recollection before
awaking in my bed, on the morning after the swoon, was of
contemplating the coast of Kepler Land with an unusual
concentration of attention. As well as I can judge,--and that is no
better than any one else,--it is with the moment that my bodily
powers succumbed and I became unconscious that the narrative which
I found on my desk begins.THE DOCUMENT FOUND ON MY DESKEven had I not come as straight and swift as the beam of
light that made my path, a glance about would have told me to what
part of the universe I had fared. No earthly landscape could have
been more familiar. I stood on the high coast of Kepler Land where
it trends southward. A brisk westerly wind was blowing and the
waves of the ocean of De La Rue were thundering at my feet, while
the broad blue waters of Christie Bay stretched away to the
southwest. Against the northern horizon, rising out of the ocean
like a summer thunder-head, for which at first I mistook it,
towered the far-distant, snowy summit of Mount Hall.