The Art of Seeing is a 1942 book by Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...

, which details his experience with and views on the controversial Bates method

Bates Method

The Bates method is an alternative therapy aimed at improving eyesight. Eye-care physician William Horatio Bates attributed nearly all sight problems to habitual strain of the eyes, and felt that glasses were harmful and never necessary...

, which Huxley believed improved his eyesight.

Huxley’s own sight

In the preface to the book, Huxley describes how, at the age of sixteen, he had a violent attack of keratitis

Keratitis

Keratitis is a condition in which the eye's cornea, the front part of the eye, becomes inflamed. The condition is often marked by moderate to intense pain and usually involves impaired eyesight.-Types:...

 punctata which made him nearly completely blind for eighteen months, and left him thereafter with severely impaired sight. He managed to live as a sighted person with the aid of strong spectacles, but reading, in particular, was a great strain. In 1939 his ability to read became increasingly degraded, and he sought the help of Margaret Corbett, who was a teacher of the Bates method

Bates Method

The Bates method is an alternative therapy aimed at improving eyesight. Eye-care physician William Horatio Bates attributed nearly all sight problems to habitual strain of the eyes, and felt that glasses were harmful and never necessary...

. He found this immensely helpful, and wrote “At the present time, my vision, though very far from normal, is about twice as good as it used to be when I wore spectacles, and before I had learned the art of seeing”.

The book is not an autobiography, however. Although his own history fuelled his interest in vision, and there are references in passing throughout the book to his own case, it is written as a general study of the Art of Seeing as he came to understand it.

His aim in writing

Huxley writes that his aim in writing the book was

... to correlate the methods of visual education with the findings of modern psychology and critical philosophy. My purpose in making this correlation is to demonstrate the essential reasonableness of a method, which turns out to be nothing more or less than the practical application to the problems of vision of certain theoretical principles, universally accepted as true.

Unlike many other many texts on the Bates method, Huxley's book contains no diagrams of the eye, and very little description of its physiology.

The supposed incurability of visual defect

According to Huxley, the prevailing medical view is that

...the organs of vision are incapable of curing themselves ... then the eyes must be totally different in kind from other parts of the body. Given favourable conditions, all other organs tend to free themselves from their defects. Not so the eyes. ... it is a waste of time even to try to discover a treatment which will assist nature in its normal task of healing. ...

He quotes Matthew Luckiesh

Matthew Luckiesh

Matthew Luckiesh DSc, DE, was a physicist and, as the Director of General Electric's Lighting Research Laboratory at its Nela Park National Lamps Works facility in East Cleveland, Ohio, he pursued research on light and vision...

, Director of General Electric

General Electric

General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...

’s Lighting Research Laboratory who wrote:

"Suppose that crippled eyes could be transformed into crippled legs. What a heart-rending parade we would witness on a busy street! Nearly every other person would go limping by. Many would be on crutches and some on wheel chairs."

Huxley goes on to stress that when legs are imperfect, the medical profession make every effort to get the patient walking again, and without crutches if at all possible. "Why should it not be possible to do something analogous for defective eyes?"

The orthodox theory is, on the face of it, so implausible, so intrinsically unlikely to be true, that one can only be astonished that it should be so generally and so unquestioningly accepted. ... At the present time it is rejected only by those who have personal reasons for knowing it to be untrue ... It is therefore no longer possible for me to accept the currently orthodox theory, with its hopelessly pessimistic practical consequences.

Sensing+Selecting+Perceiving=Seeing

He goes on to analyse the whole process of visual perception, using ideas and vocabulary taken from the philosopher C. D. Broad. He sums the analysis up as follows:

• Sensing is not the same as seeing.
• The eyes and the nervous system do the sensing, the mind does the perceiving.
• The faculty of perceiving is related to the individual’s accumulated experiences, in other words, to memory.
• Clear seeing is the product of accurate sensing and correct perceiving.
• Any improvement in the power of perceiving tends to be accompanied by an improvement in the power of sensing and of the product of sensing and perceiving which is seeing.

Variability

The most characteristic fact about the functioning of the total organism, or any part of the organism, is that it is not constant, but highly variable. ... People with unimpaired eyes and good habits of using them possess, so to speak, a wide margin of visual safety. Even when their seeing organs are functioning badly, they still see well enough for most practical purposes. Consequently they are not so acutely conscious of variations in visual functioning as are those with bad seeing habits and impaired eyes. These last have little or no margin of safety; consequently any diminution in seeing power produces noticeable and often distressing results.

Huxley goes on to discuss the factors which bring about variation – general health or lack of it, tiredness, boredom, emotional states. But whereas these are in general transitory, glasses, if worn, are to a fixed prescription.

It will thus be seen that the wearing of spectacles confines the eyes to a state of rigid and unvarying structural immobility. In this respect artificial lenses resemble, not the crutches to which Dr. Luckiesh has compared them, but splints, iron braces and plaster casts.

Relaxation

The majority of the book is devoted to the specific techniques of the Bates method

Bates Method

The Bates method is an alternative therapy aimed at improving eyesight. Eye-care physician William Horatio Bates attributed nearly all sight problems to habitual strain of the eyes, and felt that glasses were harmful and never necessary...

, all designed to bring about "Relaxation". There is "passive relaxation", a state of complete repose, which has its place. But there is also "dynamic relaxation", which is "that state of the body and mind which is associated with normal and natural functioning".

Mal-functioning and strain tend to appear whenever the conscious "I" interferes with instinctively acquired habits of proper use, either by trying too hard to do well, or by feeling unduly anxious about possible mistakes.. In the building up of any psycho-physical skill the conscious "I" must give orders, but not too many orders ... As one practises the techniques of visual education, one discovers the extent to which this same conscious "I" can interfere with the processes of seeing even when no distressing emotions are present. And it interferes, we discover, in exactly the same way as it interferes with the process of playing tennis, for example, or singing — by being too anxious to achieve the desired end. But in seeing, as in all other psycho-physical skills, the anxious effort to do well defeats its own object; for this anxiety produces psychological and physiological strains, and strain is incompatible with the proper means for achieving our end, namely normal and natural functioning.

Right at the end of the book there is a mention of F. M. Alexander, whose Alexander technique

Alexander Technique

The Alexander Technique teaches the ability to improve physical postural habits, particularly those that have become ingrained and conditioned responses...

 for posture is perhaps analogous to that of Bates for eyes.

Criticism of the book

The established ophthalmological and optometric professions have not been convinced. For example, Stewart Duke-Elder

Stewart Duke-Elder

Sir William Stewart Duke-Elder, GCVO, DSc, LLD, MD, PhD, FRCP, FRCS, FRS , a Scottish ophthalmologist born in Tealing near Dundee, was a dominant force in his field for more than a quarter of a century...

 wrote

Whatever be the value of the exercises, it is quite unintelligent of Huxley to have confused their advocacy with so many misstatements regarding known scientific facts. It has been shown that the hypothesis upon which these methods of treatment are based is wrong; but Huxley, while admitting he is ignorant of the matter and unqualified to speak, contends that this is of no importance because the method works in practice and gives good results: it comes into the category of "art" not of "science." The argument is perfectly allowable, for in other spheres than medicine empirical methods have often produced effective results the rationale of which may be mysterious. The most stupid feature about his book, however, is that he insists throughout on the physiological mechanism whereby these exercises are supposed to work. It would at least have been logical if he had continued to allow the reader to assume that he was speaking in ignorance of anything except results. . . .

There would appear to be no doubt that these exercises have done Aldous Huxley himself a great deal of good. Every ophthalmologist knows that they have made quite a number of people with a similar functional affliction happy. And every ophthalmologist equally knows that his consulting-room has long been haunted by people whom they have not helped at all.

He concluded by saying,

For the simple neurotic who has abundance of time to play with, Huxley's antics of palming, shifting, flashing, and the rest are probably as good treatment as any other system of Yogi

Yoga

Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline, originating in ancient India. The goal of yoga, or of the person practicing yoga, is the attainment of a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility while meditating on Supersoul...

 or Coué-ism. To these the book may be of value. It is hardly possible that it will impress anyone endowed with common sense and a critical faculty. It may be dangerous in the hands of the impressionable who happen to suffer from glaucoma or detachment of the retina. . .

Martin Gardner

Martin Gardner

Martin Gardner was an American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, literature , philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion...

 described The Art of Seeing as "a book destined to rank beside Bishop Berkeley’s famous treatise on the medicinal properties of ‘tar-water’"

Philip Pollack commented

Huxley sounds in his book like Bates out of Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

 with a major

Academic major

In the United States and Canada, an academic major or major concentration is the academic discipline to which an undergraduate student formally commits....

 in psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

 and metaphysics

Metaphysics

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...

. Bates wrote of relaxation but Huxley brings in transcendentalism

Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian...

. Tension and poor vision are caused by the refusal of the individual ego to surrender to Nature

Nature

Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...

.