ANIMALS. 19 



to submit, so in sleep they seem for a while sooth- 

 ed into the like submission : the smallest violence 

 exerted upon any one of them, however, rouses 

 all the rest in their mutual defence ; and the ima- 

 gination, that had for a while told its thousand 

 falsehoods, is totally driven away, or only per- 

 mitted to pass under the custody of such as are 

 every moment ready to detect its imposition. 



CHAPTER II. 



OF SEEING.* 



" HAVING mentioned the senses as correcting the 

 errors of the imagination, and as forcing it, in 

 some measure, to bring us just information, it 

 will naturally follow that we should examine the 

 nature of those senses themselves ; we shall thus 

 be enabled to see how far they also impose on 

 us, and how far they contribute to correct each 

 other. Let it be observed, however, that in his 

 we are neither giving a treatise of optics nor 

 phonics, but a history of our own perceptions ; 

 and to those we chiefly confine ourselves." 



The eyes very soon begin to be formed in the 

 human embryo, and in the chicken also. Of all 

 the parts which the animal has double, the eyes 



* This chapter is taken from M. Buffon. I believe the reader will 

 readily excuse any apology ; and, perhaps, may wish that I had taken this 

 liberty much more frequently. What I add is marked, as in a former 

 instance, with inverted commas. 



