AS TO OURSELVES 



All this is particularly well illustrated 

 in the case of the Eye, for we may here 

 appropriately quote the remarks of its 

 most distinguished scientific investigator, 

 Hermann von Helmholtz,* who says, p. 

 201 : " Of all our members, the eye has 

 always been held the choicest gift of 

 Nature the most marvellous product 

 of her plastic force. Poets and orators 

 have celebrated its praises; philosophers 

 have extolled it as a crowning instance of 

 perfection in an organism, and opticians 

 have tried to imitate it as an unsurpassed 

 model." 



But after enumerating the many fea- 

 tures of its mechanisms with their expla- 

 nations, he proceeds, p. 219: "Now it is 

 not too much to say that if an optician 

 wanted to sell me an instrument which 

 had all these defects, I should think myself 



* H. von Helmholtz, Popular Lectures on Scientific Sub- 

 jects, Appleton & Co., New York, 1873. 



159 



