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[1872 in hand writing]

          Franklin Institute Essays
A meeting of the Optical Section of the
Franklin Institute was held January 31st-Mr.
Hector Orr, Vice President, in the chair.
The paper for the evening, "How We See,"
was read by Prof. John Wise, as follows:
In preparing this paper to be read before the
Optical Section I thought some reflections 
regarding the means and modes devised by nature for the sense of seeing would be in place.It is a common expression for us to say we see; but it is not scientifically explained how we do see. With the eye, of course, says the causal observer. But how the eye preforms thisfunction is a question so profound and mysterious as seldom to enter into the inquiry of the philosophy of  
seeing. We sometimes think we see what we
really do not see. The instrumentalities of
our sense, as as allied to the nervous system of interior and exterior impressions made upon them, are in none of their appropriate organs more distinctly arranged, and so exquisitely contrived in their mechanism , as the optical apparatus. Nature, always thoughtful in the arrangement of its work, and with a forecast that we would do well in all our works to imitate, has given this department of the five senses the widest range of observation, and appropriated to it the frontal lobe of the brain stamping it most decisively as the frontispiece of the portfolio of the intellect; because is has more to record in the sum total of knowledge than any other senses. 
The eye is nature's camera, or object glass—
the instrument that elaborates the rays of light reflected from the object we look upon, and brought to a focal figure on the retina, and upside down at that; but it is only after the optic nerve has sent the photographic message to its proper receptacle in the brain, that we become conscious of having seen the thing. Light is
really the mechanic that makes the eye. Where there is no light, there can be no eye. Animals that are procreated and live in constant darkness for a great length of time lose there organs, and simply for the reason that there is nothing about them to develop eyes, and nothing could be even seen if the had them. We can cite and illustration of the fact wherein light makes the eye. Bore a gimlet hole through the wall of a dark chamber-say the door or shutter of a darkened room, facing to the north if you desire a clear experiment-and place a white screen at the proper focal distance behind this aperture, and you will have distinct pictures upon this artificial sensorium of the objects in its range of vision, and these objects in its range of vision, and these objects on the screen will be upside down. High noon is the best time to make the experiment. 
Now, while the like of duty of the optical section is to take cognizance of the things we see, taking, as it were, the whole range of the visible universe of matter, I will be excused if, by an inductive mode of reasoning, I may venture to dwell for a moment upon the process by which this cognizance of matter is conserved, by being stored away in the portfolio of our intellects. It surely is a grand thing to try and find out how we do see, and to remember the things that we have seen, and to be able to bring them up in memory's vision at any future time of our lives. 
Inasmuch as the object we see is upside-down on the microscopic lens of the eye, and we, nevertheless, see it erect and in its natural position, it follows that the cognizance of the object figure finds its resting place upon the appropriate fold of the brain, and there impressed for present and future reference. If it was not so, how else could we bring up an object in the mind's eye seen days, months, or years ago, if we had not the impression of it somewhere? Mind or memory can hardly be viewed as a [[nonenity]], or "the baseless fabric of a vision." It has a base and a material base, and to consider it as a function without an organ would be as unphilosophical as to consider how the world was made out of nothing. 
Who, that is not aware of the involuntary rubbing of the forehead when recurring to an event of the past, brushing up the memory as it were? And who so dull as not to perceive the luminous inspiration evolved from the brain in the elaboration of a train of thought, by which the impressions of the past are aggregated and set into systematic order? Do we not see all these things in the mind's eye- in the phosphorescent volume of the brain? The phosphorescence of the brain is proven every time the head receives a concussion. To say that all the things we see and learn in a lifetime can be printed on the convolutionary albumenous folds of the brain, is paying nature but a poor compliment, when human art can print the whole front of the Franklin Institute upon a sensitized membrane in a space no bigger than the dot of an i. If nature is so good an optician as to make an eye out of a gimlet-hole, and so perfect a telescope in so small an apparatus as the eye, it requites no great stretch of the imagination to allow her also the skill of an accomplished photographer. The albumen of the brain will hardly be deemed inferior in its exquisite quality of receiving impressions, to that furnished in the egg, or gun-cotton, as [[?]] by the human artist. The position, arrangement, condition, the very nature of its material, indicates the uses of the brain, and it being the sanctum sanctorum of the intellectual faculties-the store-house of knowledge-nature has inclosed it in a very strong case, enamelled within and enamelled without. 
  And while the Optical Section is engaged in so useful a pursuit as that of endeavoring to increase and diffuse knowledge, by the means and appliances of matter and instrumentalities, I would suggest that they may not forget in their microscopic investigations a searching analysis of brain matter. It often happens, within the legitimate course of events, that a small portion of fresh human brain is attainable. While they may not succeed immediately to see the impressions stamped upon the brain matter, they may discover nebular indications of such a process. The nebular and siderial heavens were not resolvable into star clusters by the first telescopes that were poised upon them. 
The revelations of the microscope have already explained much that was before involved in obscurity. If, in Harvey's time, men had been endowed with the use and powers of the microscopes as we have it now, showing us how a hogshead of blood is pumped through the human heart per hour, with a rapidity of motion like the stream in a mid flume, he would not have met with ridicule for the announcement of the discovery of the circulation of the blood. The quantity of blood as mentioned going through the heart per hour would, of course, be understood as meaning the amount of circulation. The heart, like a low pressure engine, uses the same liquid over and over again, sending it off through the muscles and nerves to do its work, and then bringing it back to receive a fresh supply of force in the lungs from motion, technically termed oxygen, but intrinsically, as understood by modern physicists, vis viva.
Optical illusion may also form a branch of investigation. It will learn us not to be too confiding to the evidence of our eyes. Judge Edmunds swore in a New York court of justice not long ago that he saw the spirit of a departed friend standing among the audience, while nobody else around him could see it. The earth, when viewed from aerial heights, has the appearance of a concave surface. It sometimes requires the aid of the sense of touch to enable us to draw correct conclusions from the sense of seeing. Dwelling too long and too incessantly with the organs of sight upon a single subject of study may lead to insanity, and we certainly know that it [[?]] monomaniacs; and then it is said that much learning has made the [[?]] in reality it may have been caused by to[[?]] learning, by neglecting to learn that if you attempt to stamp ten pages of letter-press of an essay upon a single page of foolscap paper you will produce confusion in the subject matter. Such a photographed condition of the sorium would produce confusion—insanity.
The optical section will also find much to do in the investigation of fungoid and parasitic matter, especially as connected with disease and death. Our cities are full of it in the foul and unventilated places. The wonders of the animalcular world pictured on the screen, as the water-devil chases his prey around in the depths of their miniature ocean, and the little fishes darting out of the way of his distended jaws—illustrating to us in the most impressive manner the bigger fishes in the human family eating the lesser ones, conventionally—are very amusing pastimes, but our main object is nevertheless for more unexplored regions of knowledge, in the furtherance of which we may arrive at the solution of those mysterious ways by which our health is impaired and life is endangered.
Chemistry, coming to the aid of the microscope, will teach the intelligent physician how to administer the proper antidote to the pestilential intruders that infect our blood and feed upon our bodies. The very acme of the healing art will yet be found in that grand conjuncture of perfection of chemistry and the microscope we are now so gradually approaching.
While the telescope unfolds to our gaze innumerable star suns, and solar systems upon solar systems, in the deep recesses of space, leading the mind to conjecture of worlds upon worlds, until the elasticity of penetration lingers upon the darkened vista of infinity, the microscope brings us home again for the study of the things that pertain to our bodily well-being, and to reveal to our perceptions the little things that exist by our side.
There is no field of science more prolific to research than that of optics. And that branch of it referable to optic instrumentalities, being as it were the foundation stone, must be the excuse in this paper for venturing upon territory not satisfactorily explored—I mean the way in which we do see. I have not the slightest idea that the Section will adopt my interpretation of how tho eye seeth, or how memory can call up the vision of the past, although the famous Brewster speaks of the tablet of the brain, and Sir John Herschel, of the wonderful visions of the mind, (his mind) and the passing before it of series of geometrical figures. But wherever a natural phenomenon is unexplained, or not fully explained, it is the common right, awarded by science itself, to investigate, by fact if possible, by induction if otherwise.
Now it is a fact that the object we see is upside down on the retina, we should just as assuredly see the object so inverted. But as we see the object erect, it follows that the sense of seeing is located at a place in the sensorium where we see it in its natural position.
While there could be no optics without light, and while neither the corpuscular theory nor the undulatory theory of light meets all the requirements of physical science in that direction, the optical question of how we do see is an open one. In the corpuscular theory we have the substance necessary to the act of reflection, and without substantive matter there can be no conception of that act. In the undulatory, we have a universal ether—a modern philosopher's stone, that answers, in its multifarious functions, many purposes, and among them that of shaking the luminosity of the object we look at into our eyes—but is not scientifically clear as to reflection, if we hold fast to the positive fact that there must be substance to reflect before that act can take place. The notion that mind, memory, seeing in the mind's eye, &c., are abstract nonentities, can hold no true place in positive science, however they may satisfy the easily satisfied. The progressive philosopher will nevertheless follow up, step by step, the path upon which nature has firmly set his feet at the outset.
It may be safely assumed that there is nothing in art—nothing within the province of human invention or human ingenuity—but what has its prototype in nature, and also that the natural thing is immeasurably more perfect than the artificial.
While it would be out of place here to travel out of the line of optics to illustrate this principle, in a comparison between the steam engine and the animal mechanism, or the electric telegraph, in its analogy to our nervous system, in its ganglia-plexus and sensorium, it will not be deemed out of place to have drawn the analogy between artificial optics and those provided by nature.
The closer we trace up the ways of nature, the more we shall be enabled to perfect the things of art, and by this method be also enabled to mount step by step in the progress of science, and to the higher grades of civilization.
The science of optics, or in other words, the science of seeing, is worthy of the scrutiny of the profoundest research. While the anatomists are disputing whether the retina, or choroid coat of the eye, be really the seat of vision, we may safely say neither, because we are already a step beyond that point by a knowledge of the fact that the spectrum transmitted through the gimblet-hole-eye is delineated upon the white screen three feet behind it.
The microscope, the telescope, the spectroscope, the camera, the eye-ball, are all only the instrumentalities for collecting rays of light—the brain is the receptacle upon which the impression is finally made for future reference, be it on the artificial or the natural albumenoid.
Nature is a good school, and those that are purely learned outside of her positive datum, are but artificially learned; and if the "Optical Section" stick well to her matriculation, it will march to continually higher and nobler grounds.
The paper elicited an animated and lengthy discussion. On motion, the meeting adjourned to meet again on Friday evening at 7 1/2 o'clock, to witness some experiments on the Science of Delusion, by an amateur expert.