The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-05-02
HELEN KELLER's QUALITIES.
Not Naturally More Gifted than Other
Bright Girls.
Boston Transcript.

Boston Transcript.
The movement to obtain a sort of public
endowment for Helen Keller is a peculiar
and most interesting thing. Public sub
scriptions for men and women who have
done a great deal in the world, and have
possibly served their fellow-beings with un-
grOudging service of poetry or art, so faith
fully that they have been unable to provide
for their own old age, are well enough
known; but a public subscription to equip
a young girl with q fortune appears to be a
new thing. In this case it certainly appears
to be a good thing. Helen Keller's educa-
ton is an experiment that all the world
has an interest in. 1t is not so much that
she is a phenomenon, a genius-for as she
grows older it does not appear that her in
telectual gifts are superior to those of
many girls of her age-but that the peculiar
powers of sympathy and soul perception, as
it were. which enable her to see across the
gloom that develops her, make her educa-
ton a thing Of psychological interest to
some Of those who know her best, often APP
pear to exist not so much in spite of her
blindness and deafness as on account of
them. 1t is as if the deprivation of these
senses had intensified the inner sense of
which we are all, in this age, so keenly
endeaVOring to obtain an understanding of
the meaning and uses. One feels. when en-
gagged In conversation with Helen Keller, as
II one were in closer communication with
the soul itself than one had ever been be-
fore. Though Intellectually Helen Keller is
merely strong rather than extraordinary it
is apparent that sympathetically she would
be gifted above the ordinary, even if she
possessed all her senses; and if, as the
Listener has already surmised, her depriva-
tion'of the two most important senses has
increased rather than lessened the SYM
pathetic and psychic sense in her, it is plain
that the opening of her mind, with men
as would nave a part in her education at
Radcliffe College, must have a decided in
terest to the world.
When the Listener used the word
psychic just now he certainly did not
mean to use it in such a way as to intimate
that HELEN Keller appears to possess any
IF tho nnuvnTC fhn4 nony1a coll nAa,, ~
''clairvoyant." There seems TO be nothing
of this kind in her; and the incidents of her
training have all the more value to people
in general because there is nothing abnor-
NAL or alarming about her mental make
up. If she has what the Listener has al
ready called soul PERCEPTION" it appears to
be something that most of us might nave
If we would, if we had not oVerlaid our
finer perceptions with habits of mind, con-
VehtIons' artnclai ways OF dealng with one
another. communicated substitutes for in
tuitional perceptions and a lot of such unde-
sirable things. AS soon as a child can ask
questions and ponder on our stupid answers
to them we begin, as it were, to put thick
green goggles on his preceptiol1s, and in
time he comes to believe that people and
things are really as he sees them through
these goggles. Worse than that, the seeing
and hearing child will nave these goggles
even though we try to keep them away
from him, since all the rest of the people
in the world are wearing them; and he con-
vinces himself by and by that no one is
able to sae anything without them. Blind
CIllIuIeu COIiIlOIlly grow up WIN inner SYM
pathetic perceptions than the seeing: but
their acute and restless hearing renders
them, after all, in a considerable degree.
subject to these conventional influences,
Helen Keller, through the misfortune Of her
total blindness and deafness, had opened
to her this other, and. in some respects,
finer, way of seeing and hearing all i'm one:
and her naturally fine sympathetic gifts
were developed in a way of her own along
this path, strange and strangely interest
ing to us.
Perhaps the %strangest part of the matter
is that her mind is apparently susceptible
of a conventional education without loss
of this fine soul quality. She has carried
the trailing clouds of glory up to the age
of sixteen, and bids fair never to feel the
shades of the prison house closing in upon
her. Her education should be encouraged
by her friends, not with the hope that any
prodigious harvest of intellectual works is
to be reaped for the world as the result of
1t, but with the assurance that the spirit
ual enlightenment which her development
may afford will be of real value.