178 RECENT PROGRESS OF THE THEORY OF VISION. 



to success, so does ophthalmic medicine now display how much 

 may be accomplished in the treatment of disease by extended 

 application of well-understood methods of investigation and 

 accurate insight into the causal connection of phenomena. It is 

 no wonder that the right sort of men were drawn to an arena 

 which offered a prospect of new and noble victories over the 

 opposing powers of nature to the true scientific spirit the 

 spirit of patient and cheerful work. It was because there were 

 so many of them that the success was so brilliant. Let me be 

 permitted to name out of the whole number a representative of 

 each of the three nations of common origin which have con- 

 tributed most to the result : Von Graefe in Germany, Donders 

 in Holland, and Bowman in England. 



There is another point of view from which this advance in 

 ophthalmology may be regarded, and that with equal satisfac- 

 tion. Schiller says of science : 



Wer um die Gottin freit, suche in ihr nicht das Weib. 1 

 Who woos the goddess must not hope the wife, 



And history teaches us, what wa shall have opportunity of 

 seeing in the present inquiry, that the most important practical 

 results have sprung unexpectedly out of investigations which 

 might seem to the ignorant mere busy trifling, and which even 

 those better able to judge could only regard with the intellec- 

 tual interest which pure theoretical inquiry excites. 



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 ; philoso- 

 phers have extolled it as a crowning instance of perfection in 

 an organism ; and opticians have tried to imitate it as an un- 

 surpassed model. And indeed the most enthusiastic admiration 

 of this wonderful organ is only natural, when we consider what 

 functions it performs ; when we dwell on its penetrating power, 

 on the swiftness of succession of its brilliant pictures, and on the 



1 From Schiller's Spruche. Literally, ' Let not him who seeks the love of 

 a goddess expect to find in her the woman.' 



