BEHIND the iris is a lens, as opticians call it, or magnifying- glass. We are most familiar with this portion of the eye as it occurs in fishes, looking in the recently-caught creature like a small ball of glass, and changing into what resembles a ball of chalk, when the fish is boiled. This lens is enclosed in a transparent covering, which is so united at its edges to the walls of the eye that it stretches like a piece of crystal between them; and in front of it, filling the space dividing the lens fromthe watch-glass-like window, is a clear, transparent liquid,water, in which the iris floats.
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Further: the lens is set like the jewel-stone of a ring, in what looks, when seen detached, like a larger sphere of crystal; but which in reality is a translucent liquid contained in an equally translucent membrane:so that the greater part of the eye is occupied with fluid; and the chamber, after all, which it most resembles is that of a diving-bell full of water.
Lastly: all the back part of the eye has spread over its insidesurface, first a thin white membrane, resembling cambric or tissue paper, and behind that a dark curtain; so that it resembles a room with black cloth hung next to the wall, and a white muslin curtain spread over the cloth. The latter curtain,or retina, seen alone, is like a flower-cup, such as that of a white lily; and, like it, ends in a stem, which anatomists name the optic nerve. The stem, in its turn, after passing throughthe black curtain, is planted in the brain, and is in living connection with it.
Altogether, then, our eye is a chamber shaped like a globe, having one large window, provided with shutters outside, and with a self-adjusting blind within. For the rest, it is filled with a glassy liquid, and has two wall papers, or curtains, one white and the other black.
How small this eye-chamber is we all know; but it is large enough. A single tent sufficed to lodge Napoleon and Nelson guided the fleets of England from one little cabin. And so it is with the eye: it is set apart for the reception of one guest, whose name is Light, but also Legion; and as the privileged entrant counsels, the great arms and limbs of the body are set in motion.
Within our eyes, at every instant, a picture of the outer world is painted by the pencil of the Sun, on the white curtain at the back of the eye; and when it has impressed us for a moment, the black curtain absorbs and blots out the picture, and the Sun paints a new one, which in its turn is blotted out; and so the process goes on all the day long.
What a strange thing this is! We speak of seeing things held before our eyes, as if the things themselves pressed in upon us, and thrust themselves into the presence of our spirits. But it is not so. You no more, any one of you, see my face at this moment, than you ever saw your own. You have looked at times into a mirror, and seen a something, beautiful or otherwise, which you have regarded as your face: yet it was but the reflection from a piece of glass you saw; and whetherthe glass dealt fairly with you or not you cannot tell; but this is certain, your own face you have never beheld.
And as little do you see mine. Some hundred portraits of me, no two the same, are at this moment hanging, one on the back wall of each of your eye-chambers. It is these portraits you see, not me. And I see none of you, but only certain likenesses, two for each of you, a right-eye portrait and a left- eye portrait, both very hasty and withal inaccurate sketches. And so it is with the whole visible world. It is far off from us when it seems nearest. Darkness abolishes it altogether. The mid-day sun but interprets it; and we know it not in the original, but only in translation.
Face to face we shall never meet this visible world, or gaze eye to eye upon it. We know only its picture, and cannot tell whether that is faithful or not; but it cannot be altogether faithless, and we must accept it, as we do the transmitted portraits of relatives we have never seen, or the sculptured heads of men who died ages before us. On those we gaze, not distrusting them, yet not altogether confiding in them; and we must treat the outward world in the same way.
What a strange interest thus attaches to that little darkened chamber of the eye! Into it the sun and the stars, the earth and the ocean, the glory and the terror of the universe, enter upon the wings of light, and demand audience of the soul. And from its mysterious abiding-place the soul comes forth, and in twilight they commune together. No one but HE who made them can gaze upon the unveiled majesty of created things. We could not look upon them and live; and therefore it is that here we see all things "through [or rather in] a glass darkly," and are permitted only to gaze upon their shadows in one small, dimly-lighted chamber......
The eye so triumphs over space, that it traverses in amoment the boundless ocean which stretches beyond our atmosphere, and takes home to itself stars which are millionsof miles away; and so far is it from being fatigued by its flight, that, as the wise king said, It "is not satisfied with seeing." Our only physical conception of limitless Infinity is derived from the longing of the eye to see further than the furthest star.
And its empire over time is scarcely less bounded. The future it cannot pierce; but our eyes are never lifted to the midnight heavens without being visited by light which left the stars from which it comes untold centuries ago; and suns which had burned out, ?ons before Adam was created, are shown to us as the blazing orbs which they were in those immeasurably distant ages, by beams which have survived their source through all that time.
How far we can thus glance backwards along a ray of light, and literally gaze into the deepest recesses of time, we do not know; and as little can we tell how many ages will elapse after our sun"s torch is quenched, before he shall be numbered among lost stars by dwellers in the sun most distant from us; yet assuredly it is through the eye that we acquire our most vivid conception of what Eternity, in the sense of unbeginning and unending time, may mean.
- GEORGE WILSON
QUESTIONS
What is behind the iris? In what is the lens set? What has the back part of the eye spread over it? What is the curtain called?What connects this with the brain? What is gong on every instant within our eyes? What becomes of that picture when we look at a new object? Does one person actually see another when he turns his eyes towards him? What then does he see? What, in like manner, do we know of the world? How does the eye triumph over space? What does Solomon say of it? How does it triumph over time? Of what mystery does it afford us our most vivid conception?