The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1896-08-03
HAVING EYES, THEY SEE NOT.
Strong Evidence That We Cannot
Believe Our own Eyes.

London Mail. e
But I saw 1t with my own eyes,"
is a very common expression that is
expected to be final and convincing;
to doubt such evidence Is deemed
equivalent to accusing the speaker Of
not telling the truth. Some people inn
agine that it is the quickness of the
conjurer's hand alone that can deceive
the eye. AS a matter of fact, the eye
has to be educated just the same as
every other sense of faculty. Every
intelligent being instinctively, and I'M
consciously, trains his sense Of sight
up to certain point, and particular
conditions of life will often leadorto
special cultivation in one direction or
another.
Certain savage races will be found
to have a special alertness. Of vision
that is necessary to their manner Life.
The town-bred man is generally quite
unable to detect distant objects that
are clearly visible to the man born in
district of lofty and extensive noun
tain ranges. We all learn to walk, but
very few of us ever train ourselves to
dance on the tight rope. Now, the
education of our eyes is similarly linn
vidualS. 600
A celebrated conjurer devoted years
of his life to the training of his eyes
in certain ways useful to him in his
profession. He could walk by a shop
window that was full of trinkets, and
after a momentary glance, give you
list of hundreds Of things he had
seen there; and he would often de-
scribe, in astonishing detail, the con-,
tents of the room, the inside Of which
he had only seen in passing the open
door. This accomplishment was often
turned to valuable account in the per-
Torrance Of some Of his most astountlA
ing tricks.
If the reader should care TO test the
quickness of his eyes and those of his
friends here is a very entertaining
way of doing it. Let some person go
out of the room and place some TWEEN
ty or thirty different small articles on
large tray. Covering the tray with
cloth, he will put it on table in the
middle of the company. When every
body is in position and ready, remove
the cloth for a few seconds, and then
cover up again. Now, let every per-
son write down on paper a list of all,
the things they have seen. OF course,
a good memory is of service in this
game, but it will be found that in the
case Of some persons only very few
articles have been seen.
What are called optical illusions are
usually the result of false differences
from what is truly seen by the eye.
We are as apt to be mistaken by the
appearance of things. A school mas
ter some years ago was stating to his
class that if you saw a fox's tail NOV
ing outside hole in a tree, you might
safely infer that fox was inside.
The writer, who was one of the boys
present, suggested that somebody
might be working the brush from the
other side of the tree, as a practical
joke. An orange in wax may be won
derfully accurate in form and color,
but as these are not the only distin-
gushing characteristics of the fruit
we should be careful not to form
judgment on them alone All that
we can safely say is that it looks like
an orange.
So with many other things, such as
the apparent bending of a straight
stick partly submerged in water. The
eye reports the appearance Of the OBJ
ject accurately, but it is a false con-
clusiOn that the stick is bent because
it appears so. Never trust your phys
ical eye, but only your mental eye.
Nntrained vision is most deceptive.