Fulgence Marion

“ It is not merely the outward mechanism and motion of the eyelids, nor the colour of the eyes, that constitutes their beauty; we have already said that the leading characteristic of the eye was expression. It is this expression which causes the eye to appear to speak, to fire up suddenly, to sparkle with flashes of light, to languish or conceal itself underneath its lashes, to raise itself with inspiration, or to pierce the abyss of thought, just according to the particular sentiment governing the mind at the moment. ”

“ The pencil of light is not only turned aside, but it is also widened out into a band which is truly painted with all the colours of the rainbow, every tone and hue being of the most marvellous brilliancy. This long coloured stripe, which constitutes one of the most beautiful sights that the science of optics can afford us, is known to scientific men by the name of the solar spectrum. ”

“ It is an endless chain that connects us with the entire universe; a bond that laughs at distance and spans the abysses of space. By means of light we can appreciate the beauties of hue and form, and by its power we touch as it were the inaccessible. It constitutes the most intimate connexion between ourselves and external objects—a connexion that seems even to alter our temper, disposition, and character, according to the variations of its intensity. ”

“ Suffice it to say, that no naturalist or surgeon ever attempts the most simple investigation into the structure of any body without the aid of the microscope. It has already shown us that a world of creatures exists which, although invisible to the eye of man, are possessed of wonderful forms, colour, and beauty of structure, and is daily adding to our knowledge in this direction. We can hardly submit any substances to this marvellous instrument without discovering animal or vegetable life of the most vivid character. ”

“ In such instances, the mind of the philosopher is voluntarily occupied in following out an idea which interests him profoundly; but even the most unlearned and thoughtless of us sees the images of dead or absent friends with his mind's eye, or even fantastic figures which have nothing to do with the train of thought he may be pursuing. It is with these involuntary apparitions as with spectres of the imagination: although they are intimately connected with some thought that has passed through our mind unperceived, it is impossible to trace a single link of the chain connecting them together. ”

“ When his imagination had peopled the house with these singular phantoms, the emotion he felt was so great that it gave his dramatic powers still greater force, and enabled him to produce the wonderful effects that have made his name so famous.
Wigan says, that he once knew a most intelligent and amiable man, who could at will evoke his own image. He often laughed at seeing his second self standing before him, the phantom appearing to laugh as heartily as himself. ”

“ He was often in such a state of terror, that on calm days he would drop down into the hold and wrap himself up in a spare sail in order not to catch sight of the horrible image that he constantly saw in the shining surface of the tar.
The imagination really seems to create for itself a sort of mental visual organ which is in intimate relation with that of the body, and which often takes its place so efficiently—as in the case of dreams—that the mind is utterly unable to perceive the substitution. ”

“ These little globes, so fragile that they disappear in a breath, hardly seem worthy of the attention of a thinker, and still less the examination of a philosopher; but it is nevertheless true that Newton made experiments on the colours shown on the surface of these apparently insignificant objects which ended in the most brilliant discoveries, just as on seeing an apple fall he began a train of thought which only terminated in the enunciation of the hypothesis of the earth’s power of gravity. ”

“ The same thing frequently happens to ourselves, when looking at the photographs of bas-reliefs for instance. If these objects be well photographed, with the proper arrangement of light and shade, the illusion is so complete that the finger involuntarily touches the paper to feel if the surface is not really raised. In the Bourse at Paris there are some figures painted to represent bas-reliefs in so wonderful a manner, that numberless bets have been made, lost and won, over them. ”

“ The eye is connected with the mind more than any other organ: it seems almost to be in contact with it and to participate in all its movements; it expresses in obedience to it the strongest passions and the most tumultuous emotions, as well as the gentlest thoughts and most delicate sentiments, and reproduces them in all their force and purity just as they have sprung into existence; it transmits them with exquisite rapidity even to the minds of others, where they once more become impressed with all their original fire, movement, and reality. ”

“ If, therefore, at a given instant the first lantern is shut off, the spectators see the winding sheet torn, as it were, suddenly from the spectre before them. The first lantern being turned on once more, the skeleton is instantly reclothed in its hideous garb.
It is of course not necessary always to choose such horrible subjects for representation, as it is possible to produce changes of a much more agreeable nature. For instance, a volcano may be depicted during its tranquillity, with the sun shining on its verdant sides, and surmounted with a gently rising wreath of smoke. ”

“ It may seem that I am bestowing too much praise upon our own sun; but if you are surprised that I should seek to exalt this brilliant globe of ever-burning fire, I must ask you to recollect, that though the starry heavens are full of suns as vast and important as ours, and possibly affording brilliant colourless light to worlds full of inhabitants, there are others that give forth rays that are far from being white. ”

“ Every one will laugh at the appearance of his neighbour’s face, without thinking that he is just as great a subject of laughter to them. If, in the midst of the amusement caused by this experiment, the light of day is admitted at one end of the room, the other end being still lighted with the salt-lamp, every one will appear to be half-illuminated with the livid colour which has caused so much surprise, the other portion of their figure and clothes being of the natural hue. ”

“ We all know that the first thing a child does with its eyes, even when it is only five or six weeks old, is to turn them towards the most brilliant object within its reach. Instinctively and without being aware of it, the child's eye seems to seek the light. The whole of nature, from the lowest plant to the baby in the cradle, appears more or less endowed with this instinct of turning towards the light.
From the time that children begin to distinguish objects, their eyes are liable to be affected by two causes of error. ”

“ The return of the bright spring sun, the reappearance of light and blue sky, on the contrary, open up our hearts and minds, gay nature enchants us once more, and a feeling of fresh happiness prepares us for the coming glories of the newly risen year. ”

“ Buffon thinks that blue and black eyes are the most beautiful, but this of course is a matter of taste. It is true that the vivacity and fire which play so important a part in giving character to the eye, are more perceptible in dark eyes than in those whose tints are lighter; black eyes, therefore, have greater force of expression, while in blue eyes there is more softness and delicacy. In the former we see a brilliant fire, which sparkles uniformly on account of the iris, which is of the same colour throughout, giving in all parts the same reflection ”

“ The spectators will be hardly able to recognise each other; the furniture of the room, and every other object contained in it, will reflect but a single colour. The flowers will lose their brilliant tints, the paintings will appear as if they were drawn in Indian ink. The brightest purple, the purest lilac, the richest blue, the liveliest green, will be converted into a monotonous yellow. ”

“ If it is fixed on some subject that we are contemplating inwardly, we see nothing at all, although our eyes may not only be wide open, but absolutely fixed on some particular object. For instance, suppose a sportsman is out in the fields preceded by his dogs, Bran and Ponto. If he follows the movements of Bran with attention, he becomes the only object animate or inanimate, that depicts itself on his retina. Ponto may jump and caper in vain: he is lost to his master's eye as much as if he were not there at all ”

“ The showman generally informs him that the instrument in question has such powerful lenses, that it will not only see through a brick, but even through a policeman's head if it happened to be in the way; and the spectator, having paid his penny, goes away perfectly mystified, until, like the young lady who believed that all machinery was worked "by a screw, somehow," he comforts himself with the idea that the trick is performed "by a mirror, somehow." ”

“ The phenomena of ocular spectra and complementary colours experienced by every one forms a curious chapter in the history of those illusions which take their origin in the eye itself. Every one has noticed that after looking fixedly at a bright light or a striking colour for a few moments, the eye preserves an impression of the object for a certain time. A very light window looked at intently for several seconds will leave the impression of its cross-bars on the retina for several minutes, the colour of the image changing at every movement of the eye. ”

“ I have myself spoken to well-educated people possessed of good judgment and a certain amount of elementary knowledge, who could never bring themselves to believe that we see the stars, not as they now exist, but as they appeared at the particular moment when the luminous wave by which we are enabled to perceive them left their surface, and which only reaches us after travelling through space a certain number of years, days, or hours, according to their distance. ”

“ The eye infinitely surpasses in its complexity and beauty of structure all the other organs of sense, and is most unquestionably the most marvellous object that the human mind is capable of examining and understanding. ”

“ That the eye alone has no power of determining the positions of objects by itself, may be easily proved by showing a person an astronomical object, such as the moon through a telescope. Unless the observer has been already familiarized with the appearance of our satellite, he will not know whether the image he sees is reversed or not. It is the brain, therefore, and the brain only, that has the power of determining the position of objects around us, without taking into consideration the reversed picture of them that is depicted on our retina. ”

“ One cheek, for instance, will appear animated with its usual brilliancy, while the other will be that of a corpse; one side of a lady’s dress will be brilliant blue or green, as the case may be, the other a colour that it would puzzle an artist to give a name to. The experiment may be varied by admitting the white light through several small holes in the shutter of the room, every luminous spot painting the place where it falls in its natural colours, and the yellow spectators will become spotted with the most singular tints and hues. ”

“ Wigan asked him to give him some details of the method he adopted, and he gave him the following answer: "When a sitter presents himself, I look at him attentively for half an hour, sketching the outlines of his features on my canvass during the time. I have no occasion for a longer sitting, and I pass on to some one else. When I wish to continue the first portrait, I take the sitter in my imagination, and I seat him in the chair, where I see him as distinctly as if he were really there, and I can even heighten a tint, or soften down a clumsy form at will, without altering the likeness. ”

“ A man in the front row was so frightened, that he uttered a scream of terror, when the phantom instantly disappeared. A series of spectres then issued suddenly from a cave. The shades of great men crowded together round a boat floating on a black and sluggish river, which the spectators had no difficulty in identifying as the Styx. The shadows gradually disappeared in the distance, getting smaller and smaller until they became invisible.
Robertson was extremely careful in all his entertainments to flatter the popular ideas of the day. ”

“ The crystalline lens through which all the rays pass before they reach the retina, possesses the marvellous power of being able to modify its curvature in such a manner as to adapt itself to the distance of the object seen, and thus throw a distinct image on the retina. When we come to talk of the properties of lenses, we shall see that the focus of a lens differs for objects at different distances; if, therefore, the eye were not provided with some such means for altering the focus of the crystalline lens, we should only see objects distinctly at one particular point. ”

“ In searching zealously after mere trifles which, when found, are of no consequence, we frequently lay our hands on inestimable treasures. The frequency of this fact impresses the mind with the notion that some secret and unceasing power exists, in accordance with which human knowledge and science are continually progressing. It is in physical, as in moral philosophy. In our ignorance—like the dog mentioned by Æsop, which, seeing in the water the reflection of the prey it held in its mouth, dropped the substance and tried to seize the shadow—we are continually searching after trifles ”

“ In fact, in the case of sounds, the waves are so many gradually increasing spheres. In the case of light, when a luminous body is placed in space, the ether which surrounds it is thrown into a state of vibration, and the motion is immediately propagated in all directions, with extreme velocity. It is these undulations that produce upon our eyes the sensation of light. We may therefore say that light, like sound, is movement, while darkness, like silence, is absolute rest. ”

“ It may be remarked in parenthesis, that colour is not an entity, but is simply the effect of certain properties of surface or interior structure possessed by every sub-stance with which we are acquainted. The old saying, that "all cats are black in the dark," is really a profound philosophical truth, which is not only true of cats but of the reddest rose that ever grew in a garden, the bluest violet that ever was plucked, the prettiest girl that ever was kissed under the mistletoe. ”