LUDWIG AND MODERN PHYSIOLOGY. 5 



other perfections to the rapidity with which the eye can 

 be fixed on numerous objects in succession and the instan- 

 taneous and unconscious estimates which we are able to 

 form of the distances of objects, each estimate involving a 

 process of arithmetic which no calculating machine could 

 effect in the time. 1 In another discourse — that given at 

 Leipzig when he entered on his professorship in 1865 — he re- 

 marks that when in our researches into the finer mechanism 

 of an organ we at last come to understand it, we are 

 humbled by the recognition " that the human inventor is 

 but a blunderer as compared with the unknown Master of 

 the animal creation ", 2 



Some readers will perhaps remember how one of the 

 most brilliant of philosophical writers, in a discourse to the 

 British Association delivered a quarter of a century ago, 

 averred on the authority of a great Physiologist that the 

 eye, regarded as an optical instrument, was so inferior a 

 production that if it were the work of a mechanician it 

 would be unsaleable. Without criticising or endeavouring 

 to explain this paradox, I may refer to it as having given 

 the countenance of a distinguished name to a misconception 

 which I know exists in the minds of many persons, to the 

 effect that the scientific Physiologist is more or less blind to 

 the evidence of design in creation. On the contrary, the 

 view taken by Ludwig, as expressed in the words I have 

 quoted, is that of all Physiologists. The disuse of the 

 teleological expressions which were formerly current does 

 not imply that the indications of contrivance are less ap- 

 preciated, for, on the contrary, we regard them as more 

 characteristic of organism as it presents itself to our obser- 

 vation than any other of its endowments. But, if I may 



1 I summarise here from a very interesting lecture entitled " Leid und 

 Freude in der Naturforschung " published in the Gartenlaube (Nos. 22 and 

 23) in 1870. 



2 The words translated in the above sentence are as follows : " Wenn 

 uns endlich die Palme gereicht wird, wenn wir ein Organ in seinem 

 Zuzammenhang begreifen, so wird unser stolzes Gattungsbewusstsein durch 

 die Erkenntniss niedergedruckt, dass der menschlicher Erfinder ein Stumper 

 gegen den unbekannten Meister der thierischen Schbpfung sei ". 



