Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 May 1918 — “BETTER BUND THAN DEAF" [ARTICLE]

“BETTER BUND THAN DEAF"

Scientific Writer Pointe Out Why the Former Affliction Is Less Hard to Bear. i Scientists have shown that sound not only informs the Intellect, as does sight, but that, much in excess of that sense, it excites feelings—that is, sound pure and simple has a specific relation to feelings widely different from that of sight Its primary effect was the creating of moods, Margaret Baldwin writes In the Atlantic magazine. This being so, the simple fact is that sound has far more to do fundamentally with originating our emotions, or how we feel from day to day, than has what we see. It should be said in passing, that there is very little recognition of this fact by the person with normal hearing. Sight and sound are so interwoven for him that he does not discriminate as to what belongs intrinsically td each In the province of feelings. It is only when the two are clearly separated, as in deafness or blindness, that experience takes note of what belongs to the one and the other, A scientific writer points out that we can see with indifference the wrlthings of a suffering animal that is still, but that, If there are cries of pain, it produces emotions at once. Me are distressed. In reports of terrible marine disasters, it is almost never said by people that they can never forget the sights they saw, but always that they can never forget the cries of the drowning. Although one would hardly hesitate to say that the excess of the blind man’s calamity over that of the deaf man Is sufficient to overbalance this elemental function of sound to produce moods, yet the universal fact remains that the blind are more cheerful than the deaf.