The Blindmans World | Page 4

when I heard the words, "You are welcome," and, turning, saw
that I had been accosted by a man with the stature and bearing of
middle age, though his countenance, like the other faces which I had
noted, wonderfully combined the strength of a man's with the serenity
of a child's. I thanked him, and said,--
"You do not seem surprised to see me, though I certainly am to find
myself here."
"Assuredly not," he answered. "I knew, of course, that I was to meet
you to-day. And not only that, but I may say I am already in a sense

acquainted with you, through a mutual friend, Professor Edgerly. He
was here last month, and I met him at that time. We talked of you and
your interest in our planet. I told him I expected you."
"Edgerly!" I exclaimed. "It is strange that he has said nothing of this to
me. I meet him every day."
But I was reminded that it was in a dream that Edgerly, like myself, had
visited Mars, and on awaking had recalled nothing of his experience,
just as I should recall nothing of mine. When will man learn to
interrogate the dream soul of the marvels it sees in its wanderings?
Then he will no longer need to improve his telescopes to find out the
secrets of the universe.
"Do your people visit the Earth in the same manner?" I asked my
companion.
"Certainly," he replied; "but there we find no one able to recognize us
and converse with us as I am conversing with you, although myself in
the waking state. You, as yet, lack the knowledge we possess of the
spiritual side of the human nature which we share with you."
"That knowledge must have enabled you to learn much more of the
Earth than we know of you," I said.
"Indeed it has," he replied. "From visitors such as you, of whom we
entertain a concourse constantly, we have acquired familiarity with
your civilization, your history, your manners, and even your literature
and languages. Have you not noticed that I am talking with you in
English, which is certainly not a tongue indigenous to this planet?"
"Among so many wonders I scarcely observed that," I answered.
"For ages," pursued my companion, "we have been waiting for you to
improve your telescopes so as to approximate the power of ours, after
which communication between the planets would be easily established.
The progress which you make is, however, so slow that we expect to
wait ages yet."

"Indeed, I fear you will have to," I replied. "Our opticians already talk
of having reached the limits of their art."
"Do not imagine that I spoke in any spirit of petulance," my companion
resumed. "The slowness of your progress is not so remarkable to us as
that you make any at all, burdened as you are by a disability so
crushing that if we were in your place I fear we should sit down in utter
despair."
"To what disability do you refer?" I asked. "You seem to be men like
us."
"And so we are," was the reply, "save in one particular, but there the
difference is tremendous. Endowed otherwise like us, you are destitute
of the faculty of foresight, without which we should think our other
faculties well-nigh valueless."
"Foresight!" I repeated. "Certainly you cannot mean that it is given you
to know the future?"
"It is given not only to us," was the answer, "but, so far as we know, to
all other intelligent beings of the universe except yourselves. Our
positive knowledge extends only to our system of moons and planets
and some of the nearer foreign systems, and it is conceivable that the
remoter parts of the universe may harbor other blind races like your
own; but it certainly seems unlikely that so strange and lamentable a
spectacle should be duplicated. One such illustration of the
extraordinary deprivations under which a rational existence may still be
possible ought to suffice for the universe."
"But no one can know the future except by inspiration of God,'9 I said.
"All our faculties are by inspiration of God," was the reply, "but there
is surely nothing in foresight to cause it to be so regarded more than
any other. Think a moment of the physical analogy of the case. Your
eyes are placed in the front of your heads. You would deem it an odd
mistake if they were placed behind. That would appear to you an
arrangement calculated to defeat their purpose. Does it not seem

equally rational that the mental vision should range forward, as it does
with us, illuminating the path one is to take, rather than backward, as
with you, revealing only the course you have already trodden, and
therefore