THE ARREST OF THE BODY. 105 



direction the appliances of Science tempt the body to 

 accept those supplements of the Arts, which, being 

 accepted, involve the discontinuance of development 

 for all the parts concerned. Even where a mechanical 

 appliance, while adding range to a bodily sense, has 

 seemed to open a door for further improvement, some 

 correlated discovery in a distant field of science, as by 

 some remorseless fate, has suddenly taken away the 

 opportunity and offered to the body only an additional 

 inducement for neglect. Thus it might be thought 

 that the continuous use of the telescope, in the at- 

 tempt to discover more and more indistinct and dis- 

 tant heavenly bodies, might tend to increase the effi- 

 ciency of the Eye. But that expectation has vanished 

 already before a further fruit of Man's inventive 

 power. By an automatic photographic apparatus 

 fixed to the telescope, an Eye is now created vastly 

 more delicate and in many respects more efficient than 

 the keenest eye of Man. In at least five important 

 particulars the Photographic Eye is the superior of 

 the Eye of Organic Evolution. It can see where the 

 human Eye, even with the best aids of optical instru- 

 ments, sees nothing at all ; it can distinguish certain 

 objects with far greater clearness and definition ; 

 owing to the rapidity of its action it can instantly de- 

 tect changes which are too sudden for the human eye 

 to follow ; it can look steadily for hours without grow- 

 ing tired; and it can record what it sees with infal- 

 lible accuracy upon a plate which time will not efface. 

 How long would it take Organic Evolution to arrive 

 at an Eye of such amazing quality and power ? And 

 with such a piece of mechanism available, who, rather 

 than employ it even to the neglect of his organs of 



