Second: At the end of every page or two, interrupt yourself for a couple of minutes to palm the eyes. To greedy end-gainers, this will seem the most intolerable hardship. But let them reflect that these interruptions will bring them more easily and expeditiously to their goal. Also that this “mortification” of their impatience will probably be very good for their characters!
Third: If sunlight is available, take the sun on the closed and open eyes before palming, and again, on the closed lids, after. If there is no sun, bathe the eyes in the light of a strong electric lamp.
Fourth: While reading, sit where you can see a calendar or other perfectly familiar piece of large-type reading matter hanging on a distant wall. Raise your eyes from your book occasionally and look analytically at the letters or numerals. If you are reading by daylight, look out of the window sometimes into the far distance.
Fifth: Memory and imagination can be enlisted in the service of better reading. Pause from time to time, “let go” and remember a single letter or word recently regarded. See it with the inward eye in terms of the white background surrounding it and contained within it. Then imagine the whiteness of the background as being whiter than you actually saw it. Re-open, look at the whiteness around and within the real letters and try to see it as white as the imaginary background you visualized with your eyes shut. Close the eyes once more, and begin again. After two or three repetitions, palm for a little while and then go on reading.
As an alternative exercise, close your eyes, remember a recently seen letter, take an imaginary pen and place a dot of intenser blackness at its top and base, or at its left-hand and right-hand extremities. Shift the attention from dot to dot half a dozen times; then open the eyes and, imagining that you see similar dots of intenser blackness of the real letter, do the same. Repeat this procedure several times, palm, and continue your reading.
Sixth: In the chapter on long sight, I gave an account of the way in which presbyopes could improve their reading vision by looking effortlessly at very small print—more especially at the white spaces between the lines. The benefits of this drill are not confined to elderly people with failing sight. Anyone who has difficulty in reading may profitably make use of this procedure at the beginning of a period of study, and at intervals during the period.
So much for the simple relaxation techniques, by which a session with book or newspaper should be prefaced and interrupted. Let us now consider the proper way of performing the act of reading itself.
Here, as in all other seeing-situations, the great enemies of normal vision are strain, misdirected attention, staring. In order to overcome these enemies, one must be careful, while reading, to obey the following simple rules.
First: Do not hold your breath or keep the eyelids rigid and unmoving for long periods. Blink frequently and breathe regularly, gently and fully.
Second: Do not stare or try to see every part of a whole line or phrase equally well. Keep the eyes and attention continually moving, and so bring central fixation into play. This is best accomplished by making the eyes hurry continuously back and forth in the white space immediately under the line of print which is being read. Words and letters are thus caught, as it were, between a succession of short swings. At first this technique of reading by rapid movements of the eyes in the white spaces between the lines may seem somewhat disconcerting. But after a little time we shall discover that it contributes not a little to clear and effortless reading. Letters and words are seen more easily when they are, so to speak, on the wing than when immobilized by a fixed stare—more easily, too, when they are considered as interruptions to a plain white background than when looked at as things existing in their own right and requiring to be deciphered.
Third: Do not frown when you read. Frowning is a symptom of the nervous muscular tension produced in and around the eyes by misdirected attention and the effort to see. With the achievement of dynamic relaxation and normal functioning, the habit of frowning will disappear of itself. But its departure may be accelerated, and the physical and mental tensions relieved, by frequent and deliberate acts of inhibition. In the midst of reading, suddenly turn round upon yourself and catch your facial muscles at their tricks. Then close the eyes for a moment, “let go” and deliberately smooth the brows.
Fourth: Do not half-close the eyelids when you read. Unlike frowning, this procedure has a purpose. By half-closing the eyelids, we reduce the size of the normal visual field and, in this way, eliminate some of the distracting stimuli and diffused illumination coming to the eyes from those parts of the page which are not being looked at. Most persons with defects of vision do their reading through a narrow loophole between their eyelashes; but the tendency is especially marked among those who have opacities in the cornea or other normally transparent tissues of the eyes. Such opacities act in much the same way as do the particles of water vapour suspended in the air on an autumn morning: they disperse the light in a kind of luminous fog, through which it is hard to see distinctly. Partial closure of the lids has the effect of cutting off much of the illuminated field and so reducing the density of the fog caused by the scattering of light.
But the narrowing of the aperture between the lids demands a continuous muscular effort. This effort increases the tension in and around the eyes, and is reflected by an intensification of the psychological tensions in the mind. Looking between half-closed lids is undoubtedly a way of getting an immediate improvement of vision; but this immediate improvement must be paid for in the future—for it can be had only at the high cost of increased strain and fatigue, and a progressive further impairment of the power of seeing. It is therefore very important to find a method for correcting this most undesirable tendency. Conscious relaxation of the lids, so that they remain untensed and open at their normal span will not be sufficient. Indeed, it is likely to result in our seeing a good deal worse than before, so that, in mere self-protection, we shall have to turn back to our old bad habits.
Fortunately, however, there is a very simple mechanical method for getting the results achieved by half-closing the eyes. Instead of cutting out distractions and unneeded illumination at the receiving end, that is to say, in the eye, we cut them out at the source—on the printed page. All that is needed is a sheet of stout black paper, a ruler and a sharp knife. Take as much of the black paper as will cover, say, half an average page of print. Across the center of this cut a slot slightly longer than the average line of print and wide enough to take in about two lines. (The width of the slot may be varied to suit individual tastes and to fit different sizes of type. This can be done by taking a strip of black paper, drawing it down across the top edge of the slot until the aperture is of the width desired, and fastening it into place by paper clips.)
When everything is ready, hold the black paper flat on the page with the lower edge of the slot about an eighth of an inch below the line you are reading. When you have come to the end of the line, move the slot down to the next line. And so on.
This absurdly simple little device will be found helpful by all who have any difficulty in reading. For those who suffer from corneal or other opacities, it may double the clarity of their reading vision—and this when the eyelids are fully open and relaxed.
Reading through a slot facilitates that anti-stare technique, of which I have already spoken—the rapid shifting to and fro on the white space immediately under the print. The straight edge of the black paper acts as a sort of railway track, along which the eyes travel easily and smoothly. Furthermore, the task of imaginatively seeing the white spaces between lines as whiter than they really are is facilitated, when these white spaces are regarded (and afterwards remembered) in contact with a contrasting black frame.
In certain cases, the habit of trying to see clearly too much print at the same time may be rapidly corrected by making use of a small slot, not more than three quarters of an inch long. Such a slot will permit its user to see only so much of any given line as can be taken in by the macula lutea; and rapid shifting within this confined space will bring the fovea into play. In this way the central area of the retina will be stimulated and set to work as it never was when the impossible attempt was made to see whole phrases and lines equally well at the same time. The short slot will have to be moved rapidly from word to word along the line, and reading with its aid will probably be found rather exasperating, at any rate in the
