It is a good thing to practise these acts of analytical looking and remembering in relation to the objects of one’s everyday environment, such as the furniture of the rooms in which one lives and works, the shops and billboards, trees and houses of the streets one ordinarily frequents. This will have three good results: it will break up the habit of staring, and encourage central fixation; it will compel the mind to put itself into the state of alert passivity, of dynamic relaxation, which alone is conducive to accurate remembering, and, incidentally, to clear vision; and it will greatly increase the mind’s knowledge of and familiarity with the objects it must see most frequently, and, by doing so, will greatly facilitate the task of seeing these objects.
Nor is this all. The procedure outlined above is also beneficial inasmuch as it teaches a proper co-ordination between the mind and its sensing apparatus. Too many of us spend altogether too much of our time looking at one thing and thinking of another—seeing just enough to avoid running into trees or under buses, but at the same time day-dreaming so much that, if anyone were to ask us what we had seen, we should find it almost impossible to answer, for the good reason that, though we had sensed a great deal, we had consciously perceived almost nothing.
This dissociation of the mind from its eyes is a fruitful cause of impairment of vision, particularly when, as is very frequently the case, the day-dreaming person sits with open eyes, staring fixedly and unblinkingly at one point. If you must day-dream, close your eyes, and, with your inward vision, consciously follow the wish-fulfilling episodes fabricated by the imagination. Similarly, when engaged in logical thought, do not stare at some external object unconnected with the problem under consideration.
If the eyes are kept open, use them to do something relevant to the intellectual processes going on within the mind. For example, write notes which the eyes can read, or draw diagrams for them to study. Alternatively, if the eyes are kept closed, resist the temptation of immobilizing them—a temptation which is always strong when one is making an effort at mental concentration. Let the inward eye travel over imaginary words, diagrams or other constructions relevant to the thought process which is taking place.
The aim at all times should be to prevent the occurrence of dissociations between mind and sensing apparatus. When the eyes are open, make a point of seeing and of being conscious of what you see. When you don’t want to see, but to dream or think, make a point of associating the eyes with your dreaming or thinking. By allowing the mind to go one way and the eyes another, you run the risk of impairing your vision, which is a product of the co-operation between a physical sensing apparatus and a selecting and perceiving intelligence.
Improving the Memory of Letters
For good as well as for evil, reading has now become one of the principal occupations of civilized humanity. Inability to read easily, whether at the near point or at a distance, is a serious handicap in the contemporary world. The art of reading will be discussed at length in one of the later chapters of this book. Here, I shall describe certain procedures, by means of which the forces of memory and imagination can be mobilized for the improvement of our vision of those basic constituents of all literature and science, the twenty-six letters of the alphabet and the ten numerals.
One of the curious facts discovered by teachers who undertake the re-education of sufferers from defective vision is that very large numbers of people do not have a clear mental image of the letters of the alphabet. Capitals, it is true, are familiar to almost everyone—perhaps because it is upon capital letters that the young child first practices the art of reading. But lower-case letters, though looked at hundreds of times each day, are so imperfectly known that many persons find it hard to reproduce them exactly, or to recognize a given letter from its description in words. This widespread ignorance of the forms of letters bears eloquent witness to the dissociation between eyes and mind, described in the preceding paragraphs.
In this matter of reading, we are such greedy end-gainers that we neglect to consider, not merely the psycho-physical means whereby we may accomplish the task most effectively, but also the external, objective means, upon which the whole process of reading depends, namely the letters of the alphabet. There can be no improvement in our ability to read until we have made ourselves thoroughly familiar with the letters, of which all reading matter is composed. Here again it is a question of combining analytical looking with acts of remembering.
Examine a letter, not with a fixed stare, but easily and with a rapid shift of the attention from one point to another. Close the eyes, “let go” and evoke the memory-image of what you have seen. Re-open the eyes, and check the accuracy of your memory. Repeat the process until the memory-image is thoroughly accurate, distinct and clear.
Do the same with all the letters—and, of course, all the numerals as well. The exercise may be repeated occasionally, even when you think you know all the letters perfectly. Memory can always be improved; besides, the act of remembering brings relaxation, and this relaxation, combined with the heightened familiarity which comes of better memory, will always tend to improve the vision.
When looking at letters, with the aim of familiarizing oneself with their forms, it is well to pay attention, not only to the black print, but also and above all to the white background immediately surrounding the letters and included within them. These areas of whiteness around and within letters and numerals have curious and striking shapes, which the mind enjoys getting to know and, because of its interest in them, remembers easily.
At the same time, there is less possibility of mental strain involved in considering the blank background than in considering the black marks upon that background. It is often easier to see a letter when it is regarded as an interruption to the whiteness of the paper than when it is looked at without conscious reference to the background, merely as a pattern of straight and curved black lines.
This process of familiarizing oneself with letters, by analytical looking and remembering, may profitably be supplemented by a drill involving the systematic use of imagination. Examine the letter as before, paying attention to the shapes of the background around and within it. Then close the eyes, “let go,” evoke a memory-image of the letter and then deliberately imagine that the white background around and within it is whiter than it was actually seen to be—as white as snow or sunlit cloud or porcelain.
Re-open the eyes and look again at the letter, shifting as before from background-shape to background-shape, and trying to see these shapes as white as you imagined them with your eyes shut. In a little while you will find that you can, without difficulty, create this beneficent illusion. When you succeed in doing so the black of the printer’s ink will seem blacker by contrast, and there will be a perceptible improvement in vision.
Sometimes, by way of change, one may use the imagination in an analogous way upon the black letter itself. Seated before the calendar, pay attention first to the top of a numeral or letter, then to the base (or first to the left side and then to the right). After a few repetitions, close the eyes, “let go” and continue to do the same thing to your memory-image of the numeral or letter. Then, in imagination, apply two spots of intenser blackness, one to the top and the other to the base, or one on the left and the other on the right. If you find it helpful, imagine yourself applying these spots with a fine paint brush impregnated with India ink.
Shift from one blacker spot to the other several times; then open the eyes and try to see the same blacker spots at the top and base, or on the left and right sides, of the real letter. This will not be difficult, because, owing to central fixation, you actually will see that part of the letter or numeral which you are attending to, more clearly than the rest. But imagine the spots to be even blacker than central fixation warrants. When you succeed in doing this, the whole letter will seem blacker than before, and will therefore be seen more clearly and remembered more distinctly for future reference.
These two procedures—shifting first in imagination, then in reality, from one area of whiter-than-actual whiteness to another area of whiter-than-actual whiteness, and from one more intensely black dot to another more intensely black dot at the opposite end of the letter—are particularly helpful in improving vision, and should be used (in conjunction, if possible, with palming and sunning) whenever the print of a book, or a distant billboard or notice, shows signs of blurring.
Certain other procedures involving imagination have also proved their worth in visual education. The first three closely resemble the small-scale swinging shift—indeed, are swinging shifts,
