Human eye

“ It is calculated that the human eye contains over five millions of the laminæ above referred to. With such wonders is the world of nature replete,—wonders that we daily and hourly pass by without examination.
It is by means of this ingenious and inimitable structure of the eye that external objects pass from the domain of the material world into that of the mind, and become accessible to every faculty of our brain. ”

“ It cannot have escaped your observation, that the natural and temporal uses of the eye are both various and interesting, because daily experience must have taught you, that you are indebted to the instrumentality of this wonderful organ for all the multiplied gratifications resulting from the admission of natural light, and the images of natural objects, into the otherwise dark and empty chambers of your intellectual mind. ”

“ How the particles of light affect the nerves of the eye, in the peculiar manner in which they are affected in sight, without affecting the other nerves of the body, in any similar manner, we can render no account.
That the feeling we have in sight, is very different from the feeling we have in hearing, in smelling, in tasting, or touching, every man knows. ”

“ In SIGHT, the organ is very conspicuous, and has an appropriate name, the Eye.
In ordinary language, the object of sight is the body which is said to be seen. This is a similar error to those which we have detected in the vulgar language relating to the senses of smell and hearing. It is Light alone which enters the eye; and Light, with its numerous modifications, is the sole object on sight. ”

“ Let the eye be kept steadily in one place, and take a distinct view of the object. We know, from the principles of optics, that the rays from any one point of this object, whether they pass through the centre of the eye, or at any distance from the centre which the breadth of the pupil will permit, do all unite again in one point of the retina. ”

“ 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. Let us first examine the external parts of this wonderful organ. ”

“ The eye is continually influenced by what it cannot detect; nay, it is not going too far to say, that it is most influenced by what it detects least. Let the painter define, if he can, the variations of lines on which depend the changes of expression in the human countenance. ”

“ And, as there is no probability that we shall ever be able to give a reason why pictures upon the retina make us see external objects, any more than pictures upon the hand or upon the cheek; or, that we shall ever be able to give a reason, why we see the object in the direction of a line passing from its picture through the centre of the eye, rather than in any other direction. ”

“ Every physical point of our organ of touch, when existing in a certain state, is capable of inducing in the mind a peculiar feeling, though no other physical point of the organ were affected,—as every physical point of the retina, though but a single ray of light were admitted to the eye, is capable of inducing in the mind a peculiar affection of vision ”

“ Closer inspection into the connexion of the two visual activities of the eye with its basic corporeal parts reveals that here, at the outermost boundary of the human organism, we encounter once more that peculiar reversal of functions which we have already several times met in various realms of nature. ”

“ First, the sight of the distorted eye might gradually decay by the hurt; so the appearances presented by that eye would gradually vanish. Secondly, a small and unperceived change in the manner of directing the eyes, might occasion his not seeing the object with the distorted eye, as appears from sect. I 5. art. io. Thirdly, by acquiring the habit of directing one and the same eye always to the object, the faint and oblique appearance, presented by the other eye, might be so little attended to when it became familiar, as not to be perceived. ”

“ The next thing that seems to merit our attention, is, to inquire, whether this correspondence between certain points of the two retinas which is necessary to single vision, is the effect of custom, or an original property of the human eyes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whereas we maintain that the only eye that we have—the only eye we can form any conception of—is the visible eye that belongs to the visible body, as a part does to a whole; whether this eye be originally revealed to us by the touch, by the sight, by the reason, or by the imagination. ”

“ This sense contributes more to the enjoyment and happiness of man than any other of the senses. By it we perceive the form, color, volume, and position of objects that surround us. The eye is the organ of sight, or vision, and its mechanism is so wonderful, that it not only proves the existence of a great First Cause, but perhaps, more than other organs, the design of the Creator to mingle pleasure with our existence. ”

“ When we say that the eye sees, we use popular, but not strictly correct language; the eyes are the organs or instruments of vision—that is, for transmitting certain qualities of matter to the mind; it is not the image on the retina which the mind contemplates, for we are utterly unconscious that such an image exists—it is the object itself. ”

“ We answer, by teaching us to associate vision in general, or the abstract condition regulating our visual impressions, with the presence of the small tangible body we call the eye, and vision in particular, or the individual sensations of vision, (i.e. colours,) with the presence of immeasurably larger bodies revealed to us by touch, and tangibly external to the tangible eye. Sight, as we have said, does not inform us that its sensations are situated in the eye: it does not inform us that we have an eye at all. Neither does touch inform us that our visual sensations are located in the eye. ”

“ All those operations, therefore, which proceed from direct irritation of the nervous part of the visual organ, without the medium of the eye and of light, under the term subjective vision, are opposed to those phenomena produced by the media of eye and light, and known as objective vision. ”

“ This is the interesting side of visual perception, that, owing to the vast complex of distinguishable sensations of light and colour of various qualities and intensities, together with the muscular sensations attending the varying positions of the organ, the eye is able to recognize at any instant a whole external world with its fundamental properties and relations. ”

“ Nor is it at all difficult to understand how this general condition comes to be associated with the eye, and how the particular visual sensations come to be associated with something distant from the eye: and further, how this association of the condition with one thing, and of the sensations with another thing, (an association established by the touch and not by the sight,) dissolves the primary synthesis of seeing and colours. ”

“ Expressions of the Eye.—The mere expression of the eye conveys precise ideas of the existing and predominant states of the mentality and physiology. As long as the constitution remains unimpaired, the eye is clear and bright, but becomes languid and soulless in proportion as the brain has been enfeebled. Wild, erratic persons have a half-crazed expression of eye, while calmness, benignancy, intelligence, purity, sweetness, love, lasciviousness, anger, and all the other mental affections, express themselves quite as distinctly by the eye as voice, or any other mode. ”

“ Now, I have no doubt that, as we grow gradually wiser—and we are doing so every day—we shall discover at last that the eye is a nobler organ than the ear; and that through the eye we must, in reality, obtain, or put into form, nearly all the useful information we are to have about this world. ”

“ Experience points out the eye, and the eye alone, as the visual sensation essential to our apprehension of all our other sensations of vision, and we come at last to regard this sensation as the sense itself. Inveterate association leads us to regard the eye not merely as the organ, but actually as the sense of vision. We find from experience how much depends upon its possession, and we lay claim to it as a part of ourselves with an emphasis that will not be gainsaid. ”

“ The only perceptible variation from the normal state is, that the eye, in most subjects, is clear and glassy, the same eye that is observed in some maniacs, and in consumptive patients—clear, sharp, and fearful to look at. The hidden fires of the soul seem to burn through it, with intense force. I have watched it for months, and years, in consumptives, under the wasting of vitality; and the eye kindles and sparkles with more intensity as they near their end. ”

“ The eyes, considered only as tangible objects, are by their form, the windows of the soul, the fountains of light and life. The eye-bone, whether gradually sunken, or boldly prominent, is also worthy of attention ”

“ If the metaphysician should say, that he refers to an eye of the latter description, then the plain man's answer should be—that he has no experience of any such eye—that he cannot conceive it—that he knows nothing at all about it—and that the only eye which be ever thinks or speaks of, is the eye appertaining to, and situated within, the phenomenon which he calls his visible body. ”

“ If it be not colours, then what is it that the touch compels us to associate with the eye? We answer that it is the abstract condition of impressions as the general law on which all seeing depends, but as quite distinct from the particular visual sensations apprehended in virtue of the observance of that law. ”

“ Immediately over the pupil of the eye we find the faculty of Vision or sense of Sight, marked Light, which runs into a sense of Shade at the inner angle of the eye, by which two perceptions everything in nature except colors is recognized. Light extends up into Color. ”

“ If my eye is to discern colour, it must itself be free from all colour. The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God's eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love. ”

“ The feature of the countenance which first strikes the observer is the eye—the "lamp of the body" as it is called in the new testament, but more fitly, perhaps, the "lamp of the soul," for in very truth the eyes are the lighted portals to man's inner nature. The most noteworthy circumstance which our data offer is the very large predominance of blue, gray and bluish-gray eyes among personages of distinction. ”

“ The pupil of the eye, through which the rays of light enter, represents the aperture in the window-shutter; and the image, delineated on the retina, is exactly similar to the picture on the wall.
Caroline. You do not mean to say, that we see only the representation of the object, which is painted on the retina, and not the object itself?
Mrs. B. If, by sight, you understand that sense, by which the presence of objects is perceived by the mind, through the means of the eyes, we certainly see only the image of those objects, painted on the retina. ”

“ A depth was given to the eye to give to the eyebrow a finer arch, and, by a deeper shadow, a bolder relief. To the eyes a living play of light was communicated by a sharp projection of the upper eyelid, and a deep depression of the pupil. ”

“ The organ of language—ask the little child—is not the eye: it is the ear. The eye is made for colours, and not for sounds and words.... This tension, continuous and contrary to nature, of the organ of sight, the forced precipitancy of the visual act, produced what it was bound to produce, a disease of the eyesight. ”

“ Do they really suppose the eye is a less noble bodily organ than the ear,—that the organ by which nearly all our knowledge of the external universe is communicated to us, and through which we learn the wonder and the love, can be less exalted in its own peculiar delight than the ear, which is only for the communication of the ideas which owe to the eye their very existence? ”

“ The eye, too, forms the centre of emotional expression, and reveals to our fellow-men the subtile variations in mood and passion, as it is to the physician a delicate index of our well-being. There are reasons for believing that it was the function of sight as a distance-sense that led to its supremacy in the lives of our primitive ancestors. ”

“ In visual perception the sweep of the glance, that is the adjustment of the muscles of the inner eye, the outer eye and of the head, is susceptible of being either interrupted or continuous like any other muscular process; and its continuity is what unites the mere successive sensations of colour and light into a unity of extension, so that the same successive colour-and-light-sensations can be experienced either as one extension, or as two or more, according as the glance is continuous or interrupted ”

“ The most cursory glance at objects enables the experienced eye to judge approximately of their relations and distance, although nothing is impressed upon the retina except colour, including gradations of light and shade. ”