ISOLATION WITHOUT SOLITUDE.
THE strange accident which has just happened to a rival of M. Blondin's at the falls of Niagara suggests a curious train of speculation. The man in question, who calls himself M. Farini, was to have forded the American rapids above the falls of Niagara on the 15th August on a pair of iron stilts. In a rehearsal of his feat on the 8th, one of the stilts gave way and be fell into the rapids, fortunately just above a little island called Robinson's Island. not 200 feet higher than the American fall. The rapids carried him to this little island, and though lamed he dragged himself ashore there, where he had been obliged to remain for forty hours without any immediate hope of escape, but uot without food which reached him in some way from the Goat Island Bridge, situate just about 300 yards above the island on which he has landed. The spectators on the bridge saw him sitting bareheaded and rubbing his wounded leg, but were wholly unable to render him any means of escape, though, as we said, he had already beeu there nearly two days and two -nights. We have little doubt that, as food can be transmitted to him, and therefore of course a rope, some way will be found to rescue him from his perilous position, the difficulty probably consisting in the danger of the rapids, which run with frightful velocity just before their great leap, swamping him and any boat which might be floated to him before he could be hauled either up or across them to a point of safety.
But his position forcibly suggests the possibility, though not we trust the probability, that this little Robinson's Island might become a place of final exile for this new and strangely situated Crusoe,— that the unhappy stilt-walker might find himself obliged to contem- plate this desert island so close to the world as a place of life-banish- ment where it might be possible indeed for others to reach him, if they chose to share his fate, but whence it might be absolutely impossible for any one to depart without taking the plunge with the river, or in other words the plunge from time into eternity. In such a case we may be pretty sure that the stilt-walker would practically have his choice between suicide and a fate at once more hopeless and yet apparently not so lonely as Alexander Selkirk's, a fate of misfortune that would be no secret, and yet without remedy, a fate that would not cut him off from constant tidings of the world, and yet would cut him off absolutely from the world. In short he would be a solitary without being alone ; he might be season after season a spectator of gaiety and a spectacle to the gay, permitted—almost compelled—to see the new crowds of tourists that would come to gaze upon the great waters,—and upon the solitary human life imprisoned for its whole term in the midst of their tumult and yet as completely severed from society as if he were in another world. He would be able, so long at least as the neigh- bourhood's compassion remained actively vigilant for him, to re- ceive constant tidings from the outer world, to hear how battle suc- ceeded battle, how States rose and fell, how those with whom lie himself had been connected in life prospered, or failed, or struggled on against the stream, but he could render no service in return, and would be absolutely dependent on the punctuality of external pity even for such communications. It is at least conceivable that a situation, which had already lasted for two days, might be found to be absolutely beyond remedy, or at all eients might have been so, had the island which arrested his progress been just over the edge of the cataract instead of a few feet above the edge. And it is only for the sake of the curious mental conditions such a situation would bring with it that we care to consider it.
How would such a solitary,—insulated as it were by a gulf of certain death from the rest of the world and yet kept informed of its interests, though with absolutely no prospect of mingling in them again,—with far less than Robinson Crusoe's solitude but also not a particle of his hope,—be affected by this merely physical insulation? If his eyesight were good, and, if not, with the help of a glass, he might perhaps see his fellow-creatures on the shore with at least as much distinctness as many a short or failing sight sees the daily events of ordinary
life,—or probably it would be with much the same distinctness with which the spectators farthest from the stage of a theatre see the scenes which are enacted there. Bat for the roar of the cataract he would be within easy earshot of the shore, and perhaps occasionally a speaking-trumpet might make itself heard above the waters. The sense of touch alone would cease altogether to bring him impressions of his fellow-men,—the other senses need only as it were be regarded as permanently impaired in social efficiency so as to bring his condition near to that of one whose hearing had become very dull, his sight (for many purposes) imperfect, and whose whole sensations of touch had been absolutely paralyzed without affecting his muscular strength, so that a pressure of the hand and all other social influences over his nerves of touch had entirely ceased to affect him. The solitude would be far less complete than that of many a sufferer from para- lysis who lives and retains consciousness for years after he has ceased to put forth any voluntary influence over those who watch or nurse him. Yet this is in many ways a very misleading analogy. A certain passive acquiescence accompanies the loss of powers by disease which would not accompany an equivalent ob- struction of the same powers by accidental isolation, or would entail very different mental effects if it did. Such a solitary would be capable at least of feeling active interest in the proceed- ings of the world and of reading full intelligence about it, which no paralytic could do. For a certain time—certainly while any- glimmering hope of being restored to it lasted —he would no doubt' feel such interest and devour such intelligence. How far would the certainty of life-long isolation cloud his eyes and contract his sympathies with a world at once so near to, and so far from, him, —within a few yards of him and yet divided from him by eternity?
Hope of escape once annihilated by the final cessation of all promises and efforts to release him, if it ever could be absolutely annihilated, we conceive that the news he received from the outer world would gradually come to lose its meaning for him and to seem something unreal and shadowy. A stranger in a foreign country who never opens his lips on the subject of his home let- ters or his home news to those amongst whom he moves about, because to them it would have no meaning, often feels as if the persons and scenes to which they refer were lapsing into dreamland, and would probably become the victim of this impression if the expectation, near or distant, of return, and the practical attitudes which his mind takes in consequence towards those to whom he expects to return, did not shake off the narcotic slumber. But suppose yourself not only absolutely and for ever cut off from the scene of the events of which you heir, but unable even to discuss them with any living tongue, and then, however numerous were the symbols in which they were represented to the eye,. however many descriptions you might read of them, however: clearly they might be delineated in words or pictures, the absence of living comment on them either in yourself or others, their complete disconnection with any motive force, the knowledge that they could affect you and you could affect them no more than if you were a marble statue, would soon reduce them into the half- real phantoms of a waking dream or reverie. That externalizing and so to say stereoscopic vision, which living dialogue with another upon any given theme brings with it, by setting it before you as seen from two points of view at once would be lost for ever. It would not be enough to read various accounts of the same thing if you were cut off from living signs of emotion or purpose in con- nection with it. It is not the words but the living expressions , associated with the words which realize for us the things for which the words stand. Words divorced from acts and feeliuge and the play of thought, would gradually lose their representative force, and we are inclined to think that they would do so sooner in a semi-solitary who could receive news, but could not even hope to mingle in the scenes of which he read, who had become so pure a spectator of events that he could not even form intentions for the future and put himself into the attitude of an actor on the scene, than even in a perfect solitary like Alexander Selkirk who con- tinued day after day to anticipate freedom and to use his memory as the measure of his hopes. The French metaphysicians of Condillac's school used always to be assuming, for the sake of super- ficial clearness of exposition, that a statue were endowed with the five senses one by one, and attempting to trace its intellectual history on this hypothesis. They hoped by this means to arrive at some notion bow far mere observing powers would make up a human intelligence,—where a mere " spectator " receiving impres- sions from outside would begin to be a man. It was an idle piece of mental gymnastics. There never was yet a mere observer. The power of acting either directly upon events or directly upon the sympathies and opiniewi which those events provoke, which is itself
a power of acting upon events,—in other words the power of giving as well as taking,—is an essential part of all human observation. Not even a baby could take in an impression if all voluntary action were denied it. The eye itself, it is said, would not convey to us the impression of an external world, but only of something painted on the retina, if the moving power, the adjusting muscles of the eye, lost their action. That which does not push against us, and against which we cannot push, becomes to us a mere part of our visionary world. And so we imagine it is with the moral forces of human society. The bedridden invalid retains year after year the reality of his impressions of the external world only by the help of such living exchange of thoughts and sympathies about it as he can contrive to get into his sick room. Without this action and re- action of living thought the events outside would soon lapse into the scenery of his dreams. And we are disposed to believe that such a semi-solitary as we have supposed, absolutely cut off from life, and hope, and voluntary action, would rapidly lose all sense of reality in connection with the events of which he read,—would think . of them first as of the shapes of cloud which floated above him, and then cease gradually to think of them and read of them at all. If M. Farini were to be convinced that he was for ever shut out from the world, we doubt much whether he would long realize what it was like. The crowds that he might see year after year gazing upon him within a few hundred yards of his exile, would soon perhaps become little more to him than the rushing waters or the revolving stars. The murmur of the world he had left, though it would still be in his ears, would begin to be first a mere sign or token of the past,—like the faded flowers which we have kept as a memorial of some long past journey,—and then scarcely even so much as this, a sound only more variable and not more interesting than the roar of the cataract .beneatla. We doubt much whether a reasonable hope of returning to the world, and mingling actively again in its life, would not keep longer alive human interests and human powers, even in one cast, like Alexander Selkirk, on an island far beyond the sight of man, than the mere vision of men, even if combined with regular receipt of intelligence so long as it continued to interest him,—would in one who felt that, -for all practical purposes, he was cast on an island between • ihe life of time and the life of eternity.
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