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In vain
did Helmholtz declare that 'the eye has every possible defect that can
be found in an optical instrument, and even some peculiar to itself,'
and that 'if an optician tried to sell me an instrument which had all
these defects I should think myself quite justified in blaming
his carelessness in the strongest terms, and sending him back his
instrument.' To discredit the optician's skill was not to get rid of the
optician. The eye might not be so cleverly made as Paley thought, but it
was made somehow, by somebody.
And then my argument with Father Addis began all over again. It was
easy enough to say that every man makes his own eyes: indeed the
embryologists had actually caught him doing it. But what about the very
evident purpose that prompted him to do it? Why did he want to see, if
not to extend his consciousness and his knowledge and his power? That
purpose was at work everywhere, and must be something bigger than the
individual eye-making man. Only the stupidest muckrakers could fail to
see this, and even to know it as part of their own consciousness.


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