THE ERRORS OF THE EYE.
It is with our own organization that we shall commence our task of exposing the illusions that we shall meet with during our optical experiments,—in fact with that wonderful and important organ of our body that we are apt to look upon as sure and infallible, but which we shall find is deceiving us constantly, and hourly proving the fallacy of the popular saying, that "every one must believe his own eyes." In ancient times there existed a school of sceptics who doubted everything beginning with Pyrrho, the great theorist, and ending with the follower of his school who doubted the existence of muscular force even after he had received a sound box on the ear from an opponent of his system of philosophy. If any of our readers were to become followers of Pyrrho, they might easily do so when considering the numberless illusions we shall describe to them, if they did not remember that if our senses are subject to error, we have a brain to set them right: our mind, if logical and well regulated, soon discovers errors of observation, and speedily places our judgment on the most solid basis. We shall find endless instances of this throughout our little book. If we are dazzled with illusions from time to time we shall as often recover ourselves; and no matter how beautiful or interesting these deceptions may appear, we shall speedily be able to convince ourselves that they are unreal. In this chapter we shall only speak of those
errors of the eye of which we have actually lost all
cognizance, so effectually has our judgment succeeded
in counteracting their influence.
We all know that the first thing a child does with its eyes, even when it is only five or six weeks old, is to turn them towards the most brilliant object within its reach. Instinctively and without being aware of it, the child's eye seems to seek the light. The whole of nature, from the lowest plant to the baby in the cradle, appears more or less endowed with this instinct of turning towards the light.
From the time that children begin to distinguish objects, their eyes are liable to be affected by two causes of error. Before being able to judge of the position of things surrounding them, they see everything upside down; they consequently acquire a false impression of the position of objects. The next cause of error that is likely to mislead them is the fact of their seeing everything double, a separate image of everything being formed on each eye; and it can only be by the experience gained through the sense of touch that they can acquire the knowledge necessary to rectify these errors, and see those objects single which appear to them double. This error of sight, as well as the first one, is set right so easily in the end, that although in reality we see everything double and upside down, we imagine that we see them single, and in their proper positions, a state of things brought about entirely through another sense exercising its power over our judgment; and it is hardly too much to say that, if that sense were deprived of the power of feeling, our eyes would deceive us, not only as to the number, but the position of the objects within our view.
It is very easy to convince ourselves that we really see objects double, although we imagine them to be only single. We have only to look at the same object first with the right eye, and we shall see it directly against some portion of the wall of the room in which we are sitting; then looking at it with the left eye, we shall see that it covers a different part of the wall. This experiment is easily tried, and is very convincing. Thus we see that an image is formed on both eyes, and we consequently see the object, whatever it may be, repeated twice. By degrees, however, the eyes gain the power of converging their axes on objects at different distances, so that they fall on similar portions of each retina, and so convey a single impression to the brain. Thus, for instance, if we look at a pencil held up at arm's length, and then, without changing the position of the eyeball, look at some distant object, we shall see it double. Let us, however, converge the eyes upon it, and the two images unite. Reverse the experiment by now looking at the pencil without converging the eyes upon it, and we shall see that object double in its turn. The same thing happens if we push aside one of the eyes with the finger while looking at any object. During severe illness it often happens that the patient from extreme weakness loses the power of convergence, and consequently sees every thing double, and we continually see children's faces wearing a most distressing appearance through having temporarily lost the power of moving the muscles of the eye. It is a common expression to use in speaking of drunken people, that they see double, but the saying, unlike many others, is no metaphor; when a man gets drunk he loses his power over the muscles of his eye, just as he does over those that sustain his body, and the instinctive closing of one eyelid, in order that he may see objects single, is an effort of his weakened judgment to set things right once more.
While on this subject we may mention the experiment made by the famous English surgeon Cheselden upon a boy who was born blind, and upon whom he operated successfully.
This boy, who was thirteen years old at the time that Cheselden restored to him the sense of sight, was not born absolutely blind, his affliction having been caused by a cataract or film spread over the eyeball, which allowed him to distinguish night from day, or black from white or scarlet when placed in a very good light, although he was unable to perceive the form of things around him. At first Cheselden operated on a single eye, perfectly restoring its power; but so little idea of distance did the new sense convey to the boy's mind that for a long time he imagined that everything touched his eyeball, just as those he felt touched his skin, and it was only by the sense of touch that he could persuade himself of the fallacy of his supposition. At first he had no perception of form whatever, and could only recognize objects he had already been familiar with after he had felt them all over. He was a long time, for instance, before he could distinguish between the dog and the cat without touching them, and was greatly surprised to find that the persons and things he had liked best when blind were not always the pleasantest to his newly acquired sense. His ideas of size, too, were all at fault, and he could not, for a long time, be made to understand how his father's picture could be got into the back of his mother's watch; even after he had possessed his sight for a comparatively long time, he could still only recognise people he had known during his blindness by touching their faces. Whenever he saw a new object he looked at it attentively for some time, in order, as it were, to learn its form by heart; but his memory was at first so overtaxed that he continually forgot his visual impressions, and mistook one thing for another. He was more than two months before he could appreciate form as depicted in a painting or drawing, having hitherto learned to consider pictures as flat objects. When, however, he began to understand the power of light and shade in producing the representations of solid objects, he was often extremely surprised to find the surface on which they were depicted quite flat when he touched it. The same thing frequently happens to ourselves, when looking at the photographs of bas-reliefs for instance. If these objects be well photographed, with the proper arrangement of light and shade, the illusion is so complete that the finger involuntarily touches the paper to feel if the surface is not really raised. In the Bourse at Paris there are some figures painted to represent bas-reliefs in so wonderful a manner, that numberless bets have been made, lost and won, over them. When feeling such representations of solid objects, the boy would often ask those around him which of his senses was deceiving him, his sight or his touch.
At first he saw everything of an enormous size, but as he saw things larger than those around him, he found the latter diminish. He also imagined that there was nothing beyond the room he was in, and could not be brought to comprehend how the house could be larger. When the sight of the second eye was restored to him a year afterwards, he at first saw every object of an enormous size, just as in the case of the first eye; but as he had now the perfectly educated organ to help him as well as his sense of touch, he soon began to see things under their natural appearances.
While he was in ignorance of what sight really meant, he was not particularly anxious to undergo the operation, saying that he did not think it possible to derive more pleasure from things that he liked than he did while he was blind. But now that his sight was restored he found every fresh object a new pleasure. When first he was shown the landscape from the top of a high hill, he was so delighted that he exclaimed that he had found another sense. When his second eye was operated upon, he saw things apparently twice as large with both eyes as with the one already restored to him. Even at first he seemed to have no difficulty in converging the eyes on any object.
These extracts from the history of Cheselden's patient show us how utterly incapable the eye must be of rightly understanding the number, position, size, and form of objects without frequently correcting our impressions by the aid of the sense of touch.