Sensitivity 21
always employed; but as the reverse is the case, the opposite supposition is likely to be the true one.
Ladies rarely distinguish the merits of wine at the dinner-table, and though custom allows them to preside at the breakfast-table, men think them on the whole to be far from successful makers of tea and coffee.
Blind persons are reputed to have acquired in compensation for the loss of their eyesight an increased acuteness in their other senses; I was therefore curious to make some trials with my test apparatus, which I will describe in the next chapter. I was permitted to do so on a number of boys at a large educational blind asylum, but found that, although they were anxious to do their best, their performances were by no means superior to those of other boys. It so happened that the blind lads who showed the most delicacy of touch and won the little prizes I offered to excite emulation, barely reached the mediocrity of the various sighted lads of the same age whom I had previously tested. I have made not a few observations and inquiries, and find that the guidance of the blind depends mainly on the multitude of collateral indications to which they give much heed, and not in their superior sensitivity to any one of them. Those who see do not care for so many of these collateral indications, and habitually overlook and neglect several of them. I am convinced also that not a little of the popular belief concerning the sensitivity of the blind is due to exaggerated claims on their part that have not been verified. Two instances of this have fallen within my own experience, in both of which the blind persons claimed to have the power of judging by the echo of their voice and by certain other feelings, the one when they were approaching objects, even though the object was so small as a handrail, and the other to tell how far the door of the room in which he was standing was open. I used all the persuasion I could to induce each of these persons to allow me to put their assertions to the test; but it was of no use. The one made excuses, the other positively refused. They had probably the same tendency that others would have who happened to be defective in any faculty that their comrades possessed, to fight bravely against their disadvantage, and
