The Banner-Democrat., 1902-01-18
'FHE BYE MAKES ERRORS.
NhEN " DOES NOT TELL THE MIND
A TRUE STORY.

Sad to ReIats There Are Times when
One Cannot Believe His Own Eyes-our
Optics Are Easily Deceived-Edueated
by Experience Alone.
A paper by Archibald Hobson in the
St. Nicholas explains some queer er-
rors of the eye"
We all cherish the notion that our eyes
can make no mistake. "Seing is believ
ing" is an old and respected maxim. We
depend on cur sight more than on any
of our other senses. Civilization has
dulled for us our smell and hearing, and
our taste and touch play but small parts
in our life. The average person does not
pride himself on his keenness of smell.
hearing, touch. or taste, but he would be
loath to admit that he could not "be-
lieve his own eyes" Notwithstanding,
there are many cases, as We shall see
in which the eye shows itself to be but
a poor judge of facts. incapable of telling
to the mind a truthful story of what il
sees.
We see everything, in short, by the
light of experience alone. Newborn
babies, while they have eyes, see not.
The eye is camera pure and simple. and
until its impressions can be developed
in the consciousness, what it sees means
nothing. The baby first learns to dis
tinguish light from darkness; then II
learns TO recognize its mother, then Its
father; then it learns, perhaps. to dis
tinguish some bright color, red it mo-
be- then it learns to discriminate Be,
tween near and far objects. 1t looks
at the nearest house down the street:
and takes it to be of about the size OF its
Noah's ark, for so it appear. to be
Later it goes to that house and discovers
that it is as big as its own house, which
now, at distance. in turn, looks smaller
Gradually it makes its way from the
known to the unknown, using its owr
experiences as stepping stones. The eye
knows no such thing as size or distance
in the abstract and apart from reasoning
but knowing one by experience. it can
make a sure estimate of the other.
The average woman cannot judge how
much a foot is within several inches.
but She can estimate yard very closely
while with the average man the case is
reversed. II some one asked you which
was tie longest a horses head from the
tip of his ears TO the end of his nose
or an ordinary hour-barrel, you would
,t,,V uxv tLa hN- thnytnh the
horses head is the longer. The eye is
very elsily deceived if it is called on to
pass judgment on something that has not
been brought home to it by experience.
The landlubber at sea greatly undestsi-
mates the distance of passing ships, hav-
ing no familiar landmarks with which tc
mike comparisons Truthful men under
oath in court often disagree widely a.
to observed facts, and no doubt with
perfect honesty We will not distrust
our eyes, though no doubt they deceive
US oftener than we realize.
There should be an element of illu-
sion in every picture, and the true artist
is one who knows how to make aaow-
ance for this. So also in architecture.
Measurements of the finest buildings
left Us by the ancients show us conclu-
sively that the skillful architects of those
old times understood perfectly about the
iiiusive effects of lines on the eye, for
they 80 designed their buildings as tc
counteract such defects of vision. The
wallis, instead of being vertical, lean III;
tall windows are wider at the top than
At the bottom; columns swell in the mid
die instead of being straight, the top
lines Of the buildings, instead of being
strictly horizontal. are considerably
higher in the middle, and so on. With
out doubt much of the beauty of these
classic buildings was due to the recogni-
ton of such principles in their conSruc-
ton. Modern architects generally ig-
more everything of this kind and build
strictly Sy the square, level and plumb
line. There are fine buildings in every
city tina. have been made to suffer in
this way, for, though really we'll built,
their wslls appear to lean outward, or
their cofnices to sag in the middle, ard
70 forth.