CULTIVATION OF THE EYE. 
11 
sensibility of tlie eye is capable of improvement and cultiva¬ 
tion. It has been maintained by high authority, that the nat¬ 
ural acuteness of none of our sensuous faculties can be height¬ 
ened by use, and hence that the minutest details of the image 
formed on the retina are as perfect in the most untrained, as 
in the most thoroughly disciplined organ. This may well be 
doubted, and it is agreed on all hands that the power of multi¬ 
farious perception and rapid discrimination may be immensely 
increased by well-directed practice.* This exercise of the eye 
* Skill in marksmanship, whether with firearms or with other projec¬ 
tile weapons, depends more upon the training of the eye than is generally 
supposed, and I have often found particularly good shots to possess an 
almost telescopic vision. In the ordinary use of the rifle, the barrel 
serves as a guide to the eye, but there are sportsmen who fire with the 
but of the gun at the hip. In this case, as in the use of the sling, the lasso, 
and the bolas, in hurling the knife (see Babinet, Lectures , vii, p. 84), in 
throwing the boomerang, the javelin, or a stone, and in the employment 
of the blow pipe and the bow, the movements of the hand and arm are 
guided by that mysterious sympathy which exists between the eye and 
the unseeing organs of the body. 
In shooting the tortoises of the Amazon and its tributaries, the Indians 
use an arrow with a long twine and a float attached to it. Ave-Lallemant 
{Die Benutzung der Palmen am Amazonenstrom , p. 32) thus describes their 
mode of aiming : “ As the arrow, if aimed directly at the floating tortoise, 
would strike it at a small angle, and glance from its flat and wet shell, the 
archers have a peculiar method of shooting. They are able to calculate 
exactly their own muscular effort, the velocity of the stream, the distance 
and size of the tortoise, and they shoot the arrow directly up into the air, 
so that it falls almost vertically upon the shell of the tortoise, and sticks 
in it.” Analogous calculations—if such physico-mental operations can 
properly be so called—are made in the use of other missiles ; for no projec¬ 
tile flies in a right line to its mark. But the exact training of the eye lies 
at the bottom of all of them, and marksmanship depends almost wholly upon 
the power of that organ, whose directions the blind muscles implicitly 
follow. It is perhaps not out of place to observe here that our English 
word aim comes from the Latin cestimo , I calculate or estimate. See 
Wedgwood’s Dictionary of English Etymology , and the note to the Amer¬ 
ican edition, under Aim. 
Another proof of the control of the limbs by the eye has been observed 
in deaf-and-dumb schools, and others where pupils are first taught to write 
on large slates or blackboards. The writing is in large characters, the 
