Читать книгу Adventures in Silence онлайн

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I have come to think that of all the human faculties, sound is the most closely associated with life. The blind man may say that light means more than sound; I do not know how the question can be fairly argued, but I think in most cases deafness removes us further from the real joy of living. You will notice that the blind are usually more cheerful than the deaf. But at any rate, all the seriously afflicted have lost something of life and are not on terms of full equality with those who are normal. Their compensations must come largely from another world.

Most people pass through life associating only with the living, and thus give but little thought to any world beside their own. The great majority of the people to whom I have talked about the other life are Christians, more or less interested in church or charitable work, yet they have no conception of what lies beyond. Many of them dimly imagine a dark valley or a black hole in the wall through which they will grope their way, hopeful that at some corner they may come upon the light. The law of compensation must give those of us who have lost an essential of human life a greater insight into that other shadowy existence. For us who have entered the silence there must somewhere be substitutes for music and for the charm of the human voice. Most of the deaf who formerly heard carry with them memories of music or kindly words, legacies from the world of sound. These are treasured in the brain, and as the years go by they become more and more ideal. Just as the chemist may by continued analysis find new treasures in substances which others have discarded, the man whose ears are sealed may find new beauties in an old song, or in some word lightly spoken, which you in your wild riot of sound have never discovered. And perhaps out of this long-continued analysis there may come fragments of a new language, a vision which may give one a closer view or a keener knowledge of worlds beyond. Who knows? Again, one may not only add the beauty of brightness to the past, but one may, if he will, summon the very imps of darkness out of the shadows for their hateful work of destroying faith and hope in the human heart. The Kingdom of Heaven or the prison of hell will be built as one may decide—and his tool is the brain.