CHAPTER I.

_INTRODUCTORY._

Once there lived a race of men blest with very strong eyesight--so strong that they were unconscious of possessing sight at all, but accepted their marvellous endowment as a matter of course. These men were hunters, who lived on the birds and beasts they shot with their bows and arrows.

After a time our hunters learnt other arts besides that of the chase; various implements were invented; industries such as spinning and weaving were established; the primitive huts and sheds were discarded, and commodious dwellings rose in their place. But their progress was not unattended by serious disadvantages. For instance, the weavers, who passed a great deal of their time indoors, began to lose the strength and keenness of eyesight enjoyed by those who followed the chase.

At first little attention was paid to this calamity, but when some of the weavers went blind and became a burden on the rest of the community, a meeting was convened in the council-chamber called Public Opinion, the most influential members of the tribe were consulted, and certain conclusions were arrived at.

To be brief, it was decided that the malady in question was nothing more nor less than a special manifestation of the Evil One, and that the prompt execution of the sufferers was the only sure means of preventing the spread of his power. It was therefore decreed that these uncanny and mischievous weavers should at once be put to death. To ensure the conviction of all suspected parties, a mode of trial was ordered which had the advantage of being as efficacious as it was painful. So everything seemed to be made quite safe and comfortable, and the spirits of the tribe improved.

In spite of these excellent arrangements, however, some of the invalids contrived to escape the doom thus thoughtfully prepared for them. It so happened that certain of the community, who had not been invited to vote at the meeting, held firmly to the belief that, so far from being possessed by the Evil One, these dreaded weavers were divinely inspired. Just because those whose sight was impaired could not see to do the work which was close to their eyes, their advocates credited them with the ability to discern things which were beyond the range of the most powerful vision. They therefore protected the sufferers from trial and honoured them with superstitious awe.

The disabled weavers had themselves done much to promote the conflicting beliefs concerning them. When forced by growing blindness to abandon their trade, they had been glad enough to make a livelihood by seemingly exercising their supposed supernatural vision, and thus to escape from reproach on the score of idleness; not anticipating that they would but lay themselves open to suspicion of demon-fostering. In fact, they were often self-deceived, for the disease exercised a peculiar effect on the optic nerve, causing them, when they closed their eyes, to see before them a variety of colours and forms which had no objective existence, but which they frequently mistook for Divine revelation.

Time passed on. Notwithstanding the extreme measures taken to extirpate the malady, it spread widely and increased in severity. Again the matter was investigated, and again a meeting was convened.

This august assembly took a different view of the state of affairs from that which had decreed the death of the sufferers. The former enactments were repealed. Indeed, they were declared to be barbarous and unworthy of the community which had so long tolerated them. With singular unanimity it was agreed that the sufferers were really afflicted with some incapacitating disease, the nature of which it was impossible to discover, and for which it was vain to seek a cure. It was supposed to originate in obscure injuries to the arms and legs, but on this point there was difference of opinion. It never occurred to anybody that the malady could have anything to do with impairment of the sight.

The ultimate decision of the court was to the effect that the suffering weavers were to be relieved from the necessity of working for their bread; that they should be permitted to remain a burden on the community; that they should be kept within doors and tended as cripples, and that surgeons should visit them and bandage their legs and arms.

These changes met with universal approval. The more humane members of the tribe, who had shuddered at the former barbarities, were convinced that the millennium had arrived, while the sufferers themselves accepted their fate willingly enough. For though it was dull work to be kept indoors with bandaged limbs, it was infinitely preferable to the hatred and scorn of those around them, to say nothing of a violent and painful death; and though many of them at first wished to use their limbs and to take exercise in the open air on the days when there was no glare to hurt their weak eyes, inactivity was less irksome than constant and futile efforts to fulfil their tasks.

So, at first, every one was contented with the new decisions. True, all the sufferers died sooner or later in a crippled condition, after a more or less miserable and monotonous existence; but this unhappy result was regarded as inevitable, and no further cure was sought for. Even the invalids themselves came to attribute their bodily helplessness to their original complaint, and not to the total disuse and tight bandaging prescribed by the court.

Years went by, and brought no relief either to the disabled weavers or to those who maintained them. On the contrary, the disease continued to increase with frightful rapidity. All classes of the community--which had, for the most part, abandoned its outdoor pursuits--were attacked in turn. Further investigations were made as to the cause of the calamity; a third meeting was convened, and definite conclusions were arrived at.

These, in some respects, showed more knowledge than the conclusions of the second meeting. At the same time they showed less humanity. It seemed as though the pendulum of human feeling had swung violently in the direction of intolerance, then in the direction of tolerance, returning once more, not quite to its former position, but to one far beyond the mean of wisdom and moderation. Possibly the pendulum, in its oscillations, would repeatedly pass and repass this mean point, till its range should grow more and more limited, and it should at length find repose.

The third meeting fully recognised many of the follies and absurdities of its predecessors. Powerful speakers and keen investigators argued with great force and clearness that the incapacity of the sufferers arose entirely from disuse of the limbs, and not from disease. By some of the speakers, this disuse was attributed--with a singular momentary forgetfulness of past decrees--to the wicked deceit of the idle, and of the friends who had solicited public charity in their behalf. The whole community--so these excellent, well-meaning members insisted--had been systematically gulled by the devices of impostors. There was nothing in the world the matter with the disabled weavers and those whom they had infected by their example. They must be forced to behave as if they were well, and well they would become. No doubt their eyes were weak. Whose eyes would not be weak after years of confinement within doors? Blazing sunlight and constant use of eyes and limbs would soon cure their fancies, and these infallible remedies must be prescribed for them at once.

Such cogent common-sense arguments could not but meet with the approval they deserved to meet with in the minds of the common-sense people who heard them. The recommendations of the speakers were promptly adopted.

And now ensued a very singular state of affairs. By command of the court, all invalids disabled by no visible and well-known disorder, were forced to rise from their couches, to drag themselves about in the blazing sunlight, and even to resume their former occupations. Some of them, however, succeeded in simulating well-known disorders of the limbs so cleverly, that they were considered, even by skilled investigators, to be victims of chronic disease, and were mercifully left alone. Others had already been partially cured by the complete rest from their labours they had long enjoyed, and though the rough treatment they received, and the trying effects of sudden exposure to light, caused them great discomfort, they now learnt for the first time that they had recovered the use of their eyes--long incarceration in dark rooms having prevented their discovering the fact sooner. This result, however satisfactory to themselves, was a source of infinite misery to their companions in affliction, for it was hastily assumed that a mode of procedure which had proved in the main efficacious with a few, must prove equally efficacious with all.

True, some of the patients went altogether blind the moment they were interfered with, and had to be conveyed to the blind asylum--in accordance with the custom of the country--to be kept there for the rest of their lives at the public expense. Some even developed real diseases of the limbs, in consequence of their unaccustomed efforts to take violent exercise. But these occasional failures by no means daunted the resolution of philanthropic legislators. How could there be such a thing as disease of the eyes while their own eyes were strong? With blindness they were unhappily too well acquainted, even though they had never been blind themselves; for when a man could not see at all, the fact could readily be ascertained. But it was evident that so long as a man could see, he was not blind, and therefore to treat him for loss of sight would be absurd.

The larger number of those for whom work and sunlight were prescribed neither lost their sight completely nor recovered it sufficiently to perform their allotted tasks in even the most perfunctory manner. The existence led by these unhappy people was miserable in the extreme. Every effort to use the eyes was painful. The glare of the sunlight was a torture baffling description. And their sufferings were not physical only. Their fellow-men, including their nearest and dearest friends, did their utmost to convince them of the illusory nature of their disease, and continually implored them to exert their wills to overcome temptations to imposture. By the more unfeeling, sneers and reproaches were not spared. In sheer despair the less courageous of these unfortunates died by their own hand.

Oddly enough, those who were the most uncompromising in their discouragement of supposed impostors had themselves recently become painfully conscious of impairment of vision. Fear of discovery made them loud in denouncing others; ignorance of the nature of the malady gave them hope that work and sunlight might conduce to their own cure. In time, there were in that eccentric community an abundance of deceivers of two different orders: the first pretending an illness other than that which afflicted them; the second pretending to be well when they were