Observation of Nature.

In these pages it is my aim to stimulate, not to satisfy, curiosity, and
it is no part of my object to save my readers the labor of observation
or of thought. For labor is life, and Death lives where power lives
unused. [Footnote: Verses addressed by G. C. to Sir Walter
Raleigh.--Haklutt, i., p. 608.]

Self is the schoolmaster whose lessons are best worth his wages; and
since the subject I am considering has not yet become a branch of formal
instruction, those whom it may interest can, fortunately, have no
pedagogue but themselves. To the natural philosopher, the descriptive
poet, the painter, the sculptor, and indeed every earnest observer, the
power most important to cultivate, and, at the same time, hardest to
acquire, is that of seeing what is before him. Sight is a faculty;
seeing, an art. The eye is a physical but not a self-acting apparatus,
and in general it sees only what it seeks. Like a mirror, it reflects
objects presented to it; but it may be as insensible as a mirror, and
not consciously perceive what it reflects. [Footnote: --I troer, at
Synets Sands er lagt i Oiet, Mens dette kun er Redskab. Synet strommer
Fra Sjaelens Dyb, og Oiets fine Nerver Gaae ud fra Hjernens hemmelige
Vaerksted. Henrik Hertz, Kong Rene's Datter, sc. ii.

In the material eye, you think, sight lodgeth! The EYE is but an organ.
SEEING streameth from the soul's inmost depths. The fine perceptive
Nerve springeth from the brain's mysterious workshop.]

It has been maintained by high authority, that the natural acuteness of
our sensuous faculties cannot be heightened by use, and hence, that the
minutest details of the image formed on the retina are as perfect in the