SIGHT AND THE VISUAL ORGAN. 457 



more you will know of the works and of the will of God. At least, 

 you will be in harmony with the teaching of the Psalmist. " The 

 heavens," says he, " declare the glory of God; and the firmament 

 showeth his handiwork. There is neither speech nor language where 

 their voices are not heard anions: them." So held the Psalmist con- 

 cerning astronomy, the knowledge of the heavenly bodies ; and what 

 ne says of sun and stars is true likewise of the flowers around our feet, 

 of which the greatest Christian poet of modern times has said 



" To me the meanest flower that grows may give 

 Thoughts that do lie too deep for tears." 



Abstract from Good Words. 



-++- 



SIGHT AND THE VISUAL OKGAN, 



By Dr. A. VON GEAEFE, 



LATE PROFESSOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN. 



BE the idea what it may, that we form to ourselves of the mysteri- 

 ous tie that links our perception to the life of the soul, so much is 

 undoubted, that the material supplied by the impressions of the senses 

 constitutes the basis on which the soul unfolds ; further, that they fur- 

 nish the nutriment on which our thoughts and conceptions live and 

 grow, and that through them alone is preserved the connection be- 

 tween the invisible " I " and the external world the soil in which all 

 conscious intellectual activity strikes root. 



The child does not come into the world fitted out with elementary 

 notions, as the idealists have taught, but endowed with the capacity 

 for acquiring these ideas. These impressions, coming to it through th.e 

 senses, furnish the " intellectual fuel " for the first psychical processes. 

 And, obviously for this embryo stage of mental life, the association of 

 the senses of seeing and feeling is of peculiar importance. The richer 

 the world of sensuous impressions is, and the more manifold the rela- 

 tions of sense to sense are, so all the more numerous and varied are 

 our inductions from them. By means of a process of collecting and 

 comparing, compound ideas are evolved out of simple ones, and the 

 normal, logically organized mental life attains an ever-higher develop- 

 ment, while, by the inexhaustible activity of the senses, it receives a ' 

 never-failing supply of fresh material for the perfecting of its psychi- 

 cal structure. 



The senses are indeed the gates to the mind, through which aliment 

 passes for its sustenance ; but equally, they are the portals through 

 which science must endeavor to penetrate into the mental world. 

 This has often been attempted, though in another manner, as by lay- 



