26 THE EYE 



tude are without essential significance in relation to the 

 world, they belong only to our conceptions. And yet the 

 microscopist talks of magnifying, and thinks thus to 

 understand the objects better than before. To comprehend 

 this, we must yet philosophize a little longer about magni- 

 tude, to invest this ambiguous notion with more distinct- 

 ness and substantiality. We call the foot of Schwanthaler's 

 " Bavaria" colossal, the foot of a full grown man large and 

 that of a lady small, and why ? This is easily answered ; 

 if we divide each of the three feet into twelve inches, 

 each inch into twelve lines, and each line into twelve parts, 

 we shall find these twelfths of a line undistinguishable in 

 the lady's foot, in the man's tolerably plain, but in the 

 " Bavaria" we might divide these twelfths again into 

 twelve parts, and every one of these would still be quite 

 distinct. Here then we have at once found a simple 

 definition of magnitude. A thing is large to us in propor- 

 tion to the number of parts into which we can divide it. 



But there is another consideration which may occur to 

 us in this definition of the idea. We have accompanied a 

 parting friend as far as the hill beyond the town, once 

 more we embrace him, once more gaze long and deeply on 

 his countenance, to impress more firmly on our soul each 

 dear, familiar feature. At last he leaves us, hastens thence, 

 while we stand lingering, gazing after him. He turns, and 

 still we recognize the well-known face. But the distance 

 continually increases, and by degrees the peculiarities of 

 shape vanish. A turn in the road hides him from us for 

 a while ; then he emerges yet again on the slope of the 

 farthest hill, a little, moving, black point ; he stops, waves his 

 handkerchief, but we are scarcely able to distinguish this 

 motion and at last he disappears wholly in the distance. 

 The farther our friend retreated from us, the less distinctly 



