Is language required for human
consciousness, by which I mean self-awareness?
Before my teacher came to me, I
did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world. I cannot hope
to describe adequately that unconscious, yet conscious time of nothingness.
With these words Helen Keller
began an essay in her book entitled The
World I Live In (Essay 11: “Before the Soul Dawn”). She continues,
I did not know that I knew
aught, or that I lived or acted or desired. I had neither will nor intellect. I
was carried along to objects and acts by a certain blind natural impetus. I had
a mind which caused me to feel anger, satisfaction, desire. These two facts led
those about me to suppose that I willed and thought. I can remember all this,
not because I knew that it was so, but because I have tactual memory. It
enables me to remember that I never contracted my forehead in the act of
thinking. I never viewed anything beforehand or chose it. I also recall
tactually the fact that never in a start of the body or a heart-beat did I feel
that I loved or cared for anything. My inner life, then, was a blank without
past, present, or future, without hope or anticipation, without wonder or joy
or faith.
Ms. Keller describes that famous
moment when she realized that the finger-movements in her hand meant “water” in
this way:
That word startled my soul, and
it awoke, full of the spirit of the morning, full of joyous, exultant song.
Until that day my mind had been like a darkened chamber, waiting for words to
enter and light the lamp, which is thought.
After reading this book of
essays I got Ms. Keller’s autobiography, The
Story of My Life. Here she gives a more thorough account of that auspicious
day. Ms. Sullivan, her teacher, had been with her for several weeks at this
point, and taught her lots of words, but she had no comprehension that this was
anything more than a game. One morning the two were spelling “doll” while
holding an actual doll. Ms. Keller got exasperated and threw the doll on the
floor, breaking it.
Neither sorrow nor regret
followed my passionate outburst. I had not loved the doll. In the still, dark
world in which I lived there was no strong sentiment or tenderness.
The two went outside and ended
up at the well-house where the profound moment happened; when the understanding
that words have meanings swept through Ms. Keller’s consciousness. As they went
back into the house,
I remembered the doll I had
broken. I felt my way to the hearth and picked up the pieces. I tried vainly to
put them together. Then my eyes filled with tears; for I realized what I had
done, and for the first time I felt repentance and sorrow.
I was very moved by this
passage. The first experience Ms. Keller had after her breakthrough, other than
the desire to learn as much as possible, was the complex human emotion of
remorse. Somehow the use of language connected her in a profound way to the
people and larger world around her. Is language the key to what makes us human?
I had never read these books
before, and I recommend them to everyone as a way to gain a deeper appreciation
of what it is to be human. The first impression you get is of the beautiful
soul that inhabited the body of Helen Keller.
Second, you recognize that the
human spirit can overcome all obstacles. What astounded me was her ability to
visualize! She makes it clear that there is a physical world of vision, and a
mental world of vision, and I bet that when you read her rhapsodies you’ll
think as I did that the world of the mind is more beautiful and full than that
of the physical. Through a lot of The
World I Live In she is defensive about her ability to use words like “I
see,” (clearly she was criticized for using such words), but reading her essays
it is clear that she did see, and
deeply.