Short-sightedness

“ Our race, already so beautiful, has been further strengthened and purified by these numerous trials. Short-sightedness itself has disappeared under the prolonged influence of a light that is pleasing to the eye, and of the habit of reading books which are written in very large characters. ”

“ Less perfect eyes, on the other hand, not being able to perform their functions with ease, have to make fatiguing efforts to accommodate themselves to the situation, which tend to increase existing defects or to induce short-sightedness. ”

“ I say, in the first place, both may err from shortness of sight, from not seeing all that there is in nature; seeing only the outsides of things, or those points of them which bear least on the matter in hand. ”

“ There are many reasons to suppose that short-sighted persons see objects larger than others; and it is a certain truth that they see them less. I am myself short-sighted, and my left-eye is stronger than my right. A thousand times have I experienced, upon looking at any object, as the letters of a book, that they appear least to the weakest eye ”

“ On the theory that shortsight results from any external influence to which the eye is exposed it is impossible to account for the fact that under the same conditions of life the eyes of different individuals and the two eyes of the same individual behave differently. ”

“ Such exercise, properly limited, promotes the growth and vigor of our faculties; but if we pervert them by directing them to illegitimate objects, we gradually become mad. God has created the light, and fitted our eyes to receive it; He has endowed us with the sense of touch, by which we may confirm and verify the impressions of sight. All physical phenomena are objects of sense, and the senses of sight and touch are the masters of all the other senses.
Can anything, then, be more atrociously perverse, more utterly idiotic, and I may even say impious, than these dark séance investigations? ”

“ Who, besides, would believe without performing the appropriate experiments, that when one of his eyes is closed there is a great gap, the so-called 'blind spot,' not far from the middle of the field of the open eye, in which he sees nothing at all, but which he fills out with his imagination? ”

“ With our limited vision, our blind and short-sighted judgment, how can we presume to say what is harsh or what is kind in the discipline of life? The earth as she flies on her track through space deviates from a straight line less than the eighth of an inch in the distance of twenty miles. ”

“ If you cannot make out a distant object while other people can, they will say to you, "How short-sighted you are!" but if no one can discern it, the probability is that something external has made vision impossible. ”

“ I have often noted some that are short-sighted, I say not pore-blind, to discern all things that are done about them, almost quite behind them, more perfectly then the best-sighted, if the room was not too large for the reach of their sight. ”

“ We observe however, that the blind have a more delicate and accurate touch than we, because, not having sight to guide them, they depend upon touch for the judgments we form with the aid of sight. Why then do we not train ourselves to walk, like them, in the dark, to recognize by the touch all bodies we can reach, to judge of objects around us, in short, to do by night and in the dark all they do in daytime without eyesight? ”

“ I know how difficult it is for the average mind to grasp the reality of that which we cannot see with our physical eyes. It is hard for us to realize how partial our sight is — to understand that we are all the time living in a vast world of which we see only a tiny part. ”

“ The eye of the sun itself is blind; and for ever, while it dazzles us with its light, blind it must remain. Nay, what need has it for sight at all, if in blindness it be able to fulfil its mission? And yet implicit within its vast energies, there lies the gift of sight. ”

“ To a sweeping glance it will sometimes seem barren and desolate; but not one buried germ of life and beauty is lost to the All-Seeing Eye. Having the weakness of human vision, I must believe where I cannot see. ”

“ MENTAL CONTROL IN RELATION TO VISION By W. H. BATES, M.D.
THE eye with perfect sight is always at rest. When it begins to strain the sight becomes imperfect. The eye with imperfect sight is always straining, and when it ceases to do so the sight becomes normal. ”

“ Also, human beings shut off sight with peculiar case, by closing their eyes or by the calamity of blindness. The information provided by mere sight is peculiarly barren — namely, external regions disclosed as coloured. ”

“ If you look for a minute, not much caring whether you see anything or not, and then turn away, and get your eye dazzled with all those vulgar, crude, high colours round about you here on earth, it is very little that you will see of ‘the things that are not seen.’ Concentrated attention, and a steadfast look, are wanted to make the invisible visible. ”

“ Or the observer may perceive it differently, owing to nearsightedness, or color-blindness, or the medium through which it is examined, or even because he has preconceived—that is, prejudiced— opinions of what its appearance ought to be. In short, the judgments we form of things external to us, and even of our internal perceptions, are not invariable nor consistent with one another. They are made up of external realities and internal impressions and conceptions. Color-blindness may be mentioned as a familiar illustration of the errors into which our senses may lead us. ”

“ To see these always so sharply, wet and fresh, is almost too much sometimes for the wearied yet insatiate eye. I am obliged to turn away—to shut my eyes and say I will not see, I will not observe; I will concentrate my mind on my own little path of life, and steadily gaze downwards. ”

“ I for my part noticed by the sense of sight, before I entered your Kingdom, that some of your people are Lines and others Points, and that some of the Lines are larger——" "You speak of an impossibility," interrupted the King; "you must have seen a vision; for to detect the difference between a Line and a Point by the sense of sight is, as every one knows, in the nature of things, impossible; but it can be detected by the sense of hearing, and by the same means my shape can be exactly ascertained. ”

“ The same thing happens when adults look at unfamiliar distant objects. When the eye regards a familiar object, however, the effect is quite otherwise. Not only can it be regarded without strain, but the strain of looking later at unfamiliar objects is lessened. ”

“ We have now probably said enough to convince the attentive reader, that the sense of sight, when brought under its own notice as a sensation, either directly, or through the ministry of the touch or of the imagination, (as it is when revealed to us in its organ,) falls very far—falls almost infinitely within its own sphere. Sight, revealing itself as a sense, spreads over a span commensurate with the diameter of the whole visible space ”

“ If it were susceptible to all rays, like our skin, we should get, not vision, but sunburn. Now the understanding, also having a pragmatic origin, limits our knowledge just as the eye limits our vision, and for the same purpose. ”

“ Wherever I move, whether by rays or waves of light, from the farthest star to the nearest leaf with its complexity of vein and tint, there comes to that pin-point of space, the eye, a multitudinous vision. If every pin-point of external space is dense yet not blind with immensity, what more miracle of subtlety, of ethereal delicacy, could be affirmed of matter and be denied because it strains belief? ”

“ When it looks at a strange letter and does not see it, it keeps on looking at it in an effort to see it better. Such efforts always fail, and are an important factor in the production of imperfect sight. ”

“ Is half the world struck blind to-day, and is sight given to the other half alone? No, there is neither incurable blindness, nor is sight vouchsafed only to a few. The sole reason for the confusion is that men employ different standards in measuring the same thing, and for this reason find it impossible to understand each other. ”

“ And thus, unless the minds of men are particularly directed to the impressions of sight, objects pass perpetually before the eyes without conveying any impression to the brain at all; and so pass actually unseen, not merely unnoticed, but in the full, clear sense of the word, unseen. ”

“ Every thought is preceded by a kind of half-thought, a condition in which vague geometrical figures, shifting masks, a swaying and indistinct background hover in the mind. The beginning and the end of the whole process, which I may term "clarification," are what take place when a short-sighted person proceeds to look through properly adapted lenses. ”

“ We appear (so to speak) to be capable of looking down upon mere matter as matter; but incapable, like the eye in viewing itself, of retiring to such a focal distance as to be able accurately to examine ourselves. ”

“ What is exaggeration to one class of minds and perceptions, is plain truth to another. That which is commonly called a long-sight, perceives in a prospect innumerable features and bearings non-existent to a short-sighted person. ”

“ The perception of distance by the eye, which seems so like intuition, is thus, in reality, an inference grounded on experience; an inference, too, which we learn to make; and which we make with more and more correctness as our experience increases; though in familiar cases it takes place so rapidly as to appear exactly on a par with those perceptions of sight which are really intuitive, our perceptions of color. ”

“ But to the casual observer, anything [Pg 12] done without eyesight is considered little short of marvelous. The adult soon learns to recognize voices and footsteps, to measure distance with a fair degree of accuracy, and, in many cases, to go about alone, with only the friendly cane for company. Many of the blind have what is defined as a "sense of obstacles," and it is sometimes called a sixth sense. ”

“ Ordinary perception carries with it no sense of obscureness at all, and when it does we have exactly the same kind of situation as when an object is too distant or in some other way inaccessible262 to satisfactory perception. That is, the object perceived is in the 'focus' and not in the margin. The obscureness of objects when seen with the margin of the retina has no more to do with the margin of consciousness than the obscureness caused by an attack of dizziness or by a morning fog. ”

“ CHAPTER XIII - MEMORY AS AN AID TO VISION
WHEN the mind is able to remember perfectly any phenomenon of the senses, it is always perfectly relaxed. The sight is normal, if the eyes are open; and when they are closed and covered so as to exclude all the light, one sees a perfectly black field - that is nothing at all. If you can remember the ticking of a watch, or an odor or a taste perfectly, your mind is perfectly at rest, and you will see a perfect black when your eyes are closed and covered. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The relief in many cases was so striking that I investigated some thousands of cases and found it to be a fact that persons with perfect sight, or the memory of perfect sight - that is, of something perfectly seen - do not suffer pain in any part of the body, while by a strain or effort to see I have produced pain in various parts of the body.
By perfect sight is not meant, necessarily, the perfect visual perception of words, letters, or objects, of a more or less complicated form. To see perfectly the color alone is sufficient, and the easiest color to see perfectly is black. ”

“ The sight, as it is called of figure, or distance, appearing, as it does a simple sensation, is in reality a complex state of consciousness, a sequence in which the antecedent, a sensation of color, and the consequent a number of ideas are so closely combined by association that they appear not one idea, but one sensation. ”

“ But perfect sight is never continuous, careful scientific tests having shown that it is seldom maintained for more than a few minutes and usually not so long. For practical purposes in the relief of pain, therefore, the memory is more satisfactory than sight. ”

“ But there are, of course, also the two ways of volitional vision. We can see with the endless modern critical sight, analytic, and at last deliberately ugly. Or we can see as the hawk sees the one concentrated spot where beats the life-heart of our prey.
In the four modes of sight we have some choice. We have some choice to refuse tastes or smells or touch. In hearing we have the minimum of choice. ”

“ But time is short, and science is infinite,—how infinite only those who study astronomy fully realize,—and perhaps I shall be worn out before I make my mark.’
She seemed to be greatly struck by the odd mixture in him of scientific earnestness and melancholy mistrust of all things human. ”

“ For, after all, how should it have been; how should it ever be possible for description to deal adequately with an object possessing two characteristics which overshadow all the rest, and of which one eludes the eye and the other paralyses the imagination? Size too huge to be visually measured; age too vast to be mentally realised ”

“ But really, if the seeing depended upon ordinary vision, I can not perceive that the difficulty is insurmountable; for we perfectly well know that some people are endowed with an acuteness of sense, or power of perception, which is utterly incomprehensible to others; for, without entering into the disputed region of clear-seeing, everybody must have met with instances of those strange antipathies to certain objects, accompanied by an extraordinary capacity for perceiving their presence, which remain utterly unexplained. ”

“ For knowledge involve.; consciousness; consciousness involves ideas, conceptions; conceptions involve pictures or images, and images the sense of vision, and therefore the organ of sight. But how about blind men, will be asked? Yes, a blind man may depict in magnificent poems, forms and scenes from real life, from a world he physically does not see. ”