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... | <center>'''Resuscitation of an Old Superstition by Modern Scientific Experiments—Light and Sight.'''</center> | ||
If, as Professor Huxley somewhere observes, the pathways of science are strewn with the murdered myths of antiquity, it is equally true that of late physiological inquiry has been instrumental in resuscitating many a previously-rejected superstition. From comparatively old times—for the nineteenth century—has descended the curiious supposition that the object last visible to the dying eye is imperishably photographed upon the dead retina. Most readers will recall to mind tales of retributive justice based upon the identification and conviction of a murderer through the agency of his photograph in a dead man’s eye; and at least once within the last ten years the plot of an acting drama, not to mention half a dozen sensation novels founded upon the same thesis, has been made to turn upon the terrible witness of such a rogues’ gallery. The fact—for it is the fact that such testimony is possible—has been authoritatively denied, over and over again, by physiologists of established reputation, sneered at as a relic of metaphysical speculation reinforced by morbid fancy, and finally scoffed down as among the utter impossibilities. But it turns out, as has often been the case before, that this grim conception of poetic justice was founded in fact, and that under certain circumstances the development of such ''in articulo mortis'' images, latent though they are, as identifiable photographs, is a very simple and practicable process. | |||
<center>{{Style S-Small capitals|AN OBVIOUS MORAL.}}</center> | |||
The moral is that whatever is beautiful has always, in some strange way, a capacity for rising from the dead, and contains within itself the germ of its own resurrection. Says a German mystic, from whom Mr. Emerson has caught the inspiration of more than one aphorism:—“Die Rose ist ohne Warme, sie bluhet weil sie bluhet,” typifying beauty, of course, under the symbol of that poetically hackneyed blossom. Plato, dreamiest of all dreamers, has the same fancy that Mr. Emerson has parodied from the German in | |||
{{Style P-Poem|poem= | |||
“For if the eye was made for seeing, | |||
Then beauty is its own excuse for being.”}} | |||
{{Style P-No indent|in one of his wonderful dialogues. Himself and cronies are engaged in discussing the beautiful ewer goblets of the Falernian, when, in one of the pregnant pauses of the occasion, the philosopher observes as follows:—“That beauty is neither immortal, like the gods, nor, like men, mortal, but in the verdure of the valleys lives and blossoms for a day, having another life to-morrow.” What the old man means is, that while in her externality beauty is ephemeral, in her interior reality she never dies, wherefore he adds that in the blossoms of the valley she is constantly dying and constantly rising again from the dead.}} | |||
The regeneration of this old myth is in its way an example of that longevity of all things beautiful, that may well point a moral to such scientific Alcibiades as have dared to speculate whether poetry can co-exist with science. When, as in this instance, a deeper science constantly verifies what a shallow science has denied—the eternity of the beautiful because it is beautiful—one need not trouble one’s self to argue, where argument is not only loss of time but loss of temper and patience also. | |||
<center>{{Style S-Small capitals|A Glance at the Evidence.}}</center> | |||
However, a glance at the evidence. Leydig and other eminent physiologists have so repeatedly stated the one isolated fact that the fresh retina in frogs and other animals has a reddish tinge, that the point is familiar to the most cursory reader of histological treatises. This fact alone, though significant, demonstrated nothing, and for years it lay fallow. Recently Professor Boll (''Zur Anatomie und Physiologie der Retina''), the celebrated Du Bois-Raymond and Professor Kühne (''Ueber der Sehpurpur'') have contributed very important data to retinal physiology, all of which have been printed within the last two years. It appears from these as yet untranslated essays and volumes that not only is the living retina always red, but that its color is subject to material alterations from the action of light. The coloration is, it should be premised, limited to the external aspect of the retinal rods, a considerable proportion of which, at least in the frog, are also of a bluish-green tinge. It exists in all animals having retinal rods, invertebrates as well as vertebrates. Boll having ascertained it in the cephalopods and an anthropods, and in all the fishes and amphibia brought under examination. In reptilians and birds the colored oil globules—most beautiful microscopic objects—interfere with its detection; and in the retina of the lizard and coluber natrix, which offer no retinal rods to | |||
Revision as of 16:26, 22 July 2026
 |
vol. title: Miscellaneous Scraps from January 1st 1878 vol. period: 1875-1878 pages in vol.: 153 |
A Dead Man's Eye
If, as Professor Huxley somewhere observes, the pathways of science are strewn with the murdered myths of antiquity, it is equally true that of late physiological inquiry has been instrumental in resuscitating many a previously-rejected superstition. From comparatively old times—for the nineteenth century—has descended the curiious supposition that the object last visible to the dying eye is imperishably photographed upon the dead retina. Most readers will recall to mind tales of retributive justice based upon the identification and conviction of a murderer through the agency of his photograph in a dead man’s eye; and at least once within the last ten years the plot of an acting drama, not to mention half a dozen sensation novels founded upon the same thesis, has been made to turn upon the terrible witness of such a rogues’ gallery. The fact—for it is the fact that such testimony is possible—has been authoritatively denied, over and over again, by physiologists of established reputation, sneered at as a relic of metaphysical speculation reinforced by morbid fancy, and finally scoffed down as among the utter impossibilities. But it turns out, as has often been the case before, that this grim conception of poetic justice was founded in fact, and that under certain circumstances the development of such in articulo mortis images, latent though they are, as identifiable photographs, is a very simple and practicable process.
The moral is that whatever is beautiful has always, in some strange way, a capacity for rising from the dead, and contains within itself the germ of its own resurrection. Says a German mystic, from whom Mr. Emerson has caught the inspiration of more than one aphorism:—“Die Rose ist ohne Warme, sie bluhet weil sie bluhet,” typifying beauty, of course, under the symbol of that poetically hackneyed blossom. Plato, dreamiest of all dreamers, has the same fancy that Mr. Emerson has parodied from the German in
“For if the eye was made for seeing, |
in one of his wonderful dialogues. Himself and cronies are engaged in discussing the beautiful ewer goblets of the Falernian, when, in one of the pregnant pauses of the occasion, the philosopher observes as follows:—“That beauty is neither immortal, like the gods, nor, like men, mortal, but in the verdure of the valleys lives and blossoms for a day, having another life to-morrow.” What the old man means is, that while in her externality beauty is ephemeral, in her interior reality she never dies, wherefore he adds that in the blossoms of the valley she is constantly dying and constantly rising again from the dead.
The regeneration of this old myth is in its way an example of that longevity of all things beautiful, that may well point a moral to such scientific Alcibiades as have dared to speculate whether poetry can co-exist with science. When, as in this instance, a deeper science constantly verifies what a shallow science has denied—the eternity of the beautiful because it is beautiful—one need not trouble one’s self to argue, where argument is not only loss of time but loss of temper and patience also.
However, a glance at the evidence. Leydig and other eminent physiologists have so repeatedly stated the one isolated fact that the fresh retina in frogs and other animals has a reddish tinge, that the point is familiar to the most cursory reader of histological treatises. This fact alone, though significant, demonstrated nothing, and for years it lay fallow. Recently Professor Boll (Zur Anatomie und Physiologie der Retina), the celebrated Du Bois-Raymond and Professor Kühne (Ueber der Sehpurpur) have contributed very important data to retinal physiology, all of which have been printed within the last two years. It appears from these as yet untranslated essays and volumes that not only is the living retina always red, but that its color is subject to material alterations from the action of light. The coloration is, it should be premised, limited to the external aspect of the retinal rods, a considerable proportion of which, at least in the frog, are also of a bluish-green tinge. It exists in all animals having retinal rods, invertebrates as well as vertebrates. Boll having ascertained it in the cephalopods and an anthropods, and in all the fishes and amphibia brought under examination. In reptilians and birds the colored oil globules—most beautiful microscopic objects—interfere with its detection; and in the retina of the lizard and coluber natrix, which offer no retinal rods to
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<... continues on page 5-98 >
Editor's notes