Eyes and No Eyes by J. M. Wilson

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Jun 16, 1904

Eyes and No Eyes

By J. M. Wilson

MOREOVER, taking education in its broad sense as the training of all the powers that go to make up the man, I would point out how much science contributes toward increasing the powers of the senses. All science is based, some one said, on the fact that we have great curiosity and very weak eyes; and science gives men a marvelous extension of the power and range of the acuteness of those eyes. “Eyes and No Eyes” is the title of an old story; and it scarcely seems too strong a way of marking the difference between the powers of perception of a cultivated naturalist and those of the ordinary gentleman ignorant of everything in nature. To the one the stars of heaven and the stones on earth, the forms of the hills and the flowers in the hedges, are a constant source of that great and peculiar pleasure derived from intelligence. And day by day do I see how boys increase their range of sight, and that not only of the things we teach them to see, but they outrun us, and discover for themselves. And the power once gained can never be lost. I know many instances of boys whose eyes were opened at school by the ordinary natural-science lectures, who have since found great pleasure and constant occupation in some branch of scientific study.—J. M. Wilson.