how the world began, in “w-a-t-e-r” and in spirit

some reflections on perception occasioned by Helen Keller

We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Some one was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten–a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.

I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. On entering the door 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 learned a great many new words that day. I do not remember what they all were; but I do know that mother, father, sister, teacher were among them–words that were to make the world blossom for me, "like Aaron's rod, with flowers." It would have been difficult to find a happier child than I was as I lay in my crib at the close of the eventful day and lived over the joys it had brought me, and for the first time longed for a new day to come.

—from chapter IV of Helen Keller’s autobiography, The Story of My Life

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NAÏVE people think of the visual process by analogy with a pinhole camera, but that is all wrong. Or at least, to be an accurate analogy, you would have to include the photographer and perhaps the one who examines the photos as well for the analogy to be complete. In other words, it’s not enough to say that we just open our eyes and the world merely pours into our brains. We know this because infants will reach for the moon, and they must construct the cognitive scaffolding of spatial extension and the persistence of objects through time to, by degrees, learn to discern things, beings, and phenomena out of the “blooming, buzzing confusion” of pure sensory stimulation. I am reminded of a scene from the Gospels in which Jesus heals a man born blind. First, though his eyes begin to function, his soul is not used to employing them as an instrument and hence he sees only dim outlines:  

And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought. And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking.

only later does he attain to true vision. It is comparable to Mary’s twofold “turning” to perceive the Risen One:

But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre, And seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him. And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him…Master. 

Of course, the literal narrative is also symbolic of spiritual transformations, not unlike the Allegory of the Cave, but none of these interpretations conflicts with the literal one.

Two further points that are both related but somewhat distinct as well also deserve emphasis. First, Helen Keller’s testimony shows us that without language, there is no world for us, only an immediate sensory environment. She says this much herself:

Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world.¹

Just as “water” remains imperceptible to Helen Keller until she had grasped the word for it and, by extension, the concept or idea of it, so “the world” is not perceptible to us until we perform a similar task. Just as ideas share in the nature of things, so things share in the nature of ideas and that is why the world is intelligible to us and not a mere tohu-bohu, as the "formless void" is called in Hebrew before God spoke Creation into existence. Humans, without ceasing to inhabit an environment, can begin to occupy a world, but that is not a genetic inheritance but a cultural and spiritual one. That means that every individual must realize or actualize this inheritance in his or her own lifetime. It is perhaps in undertaking this task that we also begin to undertake the Great Work, or magnum opus of the alchemists: namely, the forging of the self. Again, Helen Keller’s account illustrates what each of us accomplishes in our own way:

When I learned the meaning of “I” and “me” and found that I was something, I began to think. Then consciousness first existed for me.²

The second point builds off of the first one. Consider that “water” could have been called aqua, or Wasser, or agua, or vatten, etc. and though the outer word is different in each case, the soul of the word, the inner word, the concept, the idea, the essence, the meaning, the thought, the spirit, or whatever one wishes to call it remains the same. Indeed, the concept of water is one and we all partake in it according to the degree of our knowledge and experience.

This was a profound shift for me years ago as I began to think through these questions. To begin with, I held to the naïve empiricist position that believes sensory perception to be objective and concepts or thoughts to be subjective—“just in my head,” as it is often said. Now I see that this view is the precise opposite of the truth. What is unique and hence subjective to me is the particular series of sensory percepts that I encounter, which of course remain unintelligible to me until I have gathered them together³ and organized them according to ideal or conceptual or spiritual lineaments. Conversely, what is universal and hence objective are precisely these ideas or concepts that I draw on to do this. The spiritual topography that we navigate with our minds is something we share in. This has to be true because otherwise we could never understand the speech of another person, and communication through language per se would be impossible. Even someone who professes to disagree with me implicitly affirms the truth of this statement in his ability to take offense. This can be a challenging topic to get one’s mind around because it really turns our ordinary notions inside out so that it's more like the comprehension surrounds the mind than the mind surrounding the object of comprehension. Perhaps this was the intuition around the word “understanding.”

Photo by Philip Graves on Unsplash

1. Helen Keller, The World I Live In, chapter XI

2. Helen Keller, The World I Live In, chapter XI

3. the etymological origin of logos is in the verb “to gather”