The structure and functions of the eye, illustrative of the power, wisdom, and goodness of God / by Spencer Thomson.

  • Thomson, Spencer, 1817-1886.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The structure and functions of the eye, illustrative of the power, wisdom, and goodness of God / by Spencer Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    which, must take place at the central station, as it may be called, in the brain. Looking at the objects fulfilled by the iris— its perfect adaptation to the ends for which it has been created, as it floats free in the aqueous humour, ever ready, like a watchful sentinel, to guard, or as a faithful attendant to serve, its charge within—it is impossible to imagine a structure more fitted for the purposes in view. None, perhaps, in the vast range of the world's creation, exhibits more strongly, in its simple perfection, the wide gulf which inter- venes between the living creations of the Almighty and the dead imitations of man. Combining both use and beauty, the rainbow curtain of the sun-bright eye confers much of their expression upon those organs whose heavenly rhetoric will sometimes persuade where the tongue would fail—-which, by their bend, speaking the silent superiority of mind over mind, compel the obedience of the irresolute to the stronger will, or awe the fiercest animal, till it shrinks away from the look of man, and tacitly yields him the do- minion assigned him by his Maker.