Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/47

Rh without this organ, all the splendour and beauties of outward nature would be lost upon you; colour would be colourless, shape shapeless, and every glory and stupendous object of creation would be hidden under a veil of impenetrable darkness. Even the bright rays of the sun of this lower world would be deprived of all their cheering influences, and you would find yourself, to all intents and purposes of recreation, a blind inhabitant of a sun-less, moon-less, and star-less cavern. In point, therefore, of mere animal gratification, the immense debt which you owe to the Creator of your eyes is incalculable, and defies all the powers of arithmetic.

Animal gratification, however, forms but a small and comparatively trivial part of the natural and temporal uses and blessings which you are perpetually deriving from the organ of vision. For, lo! what a multitude of nameless, yet interesting, objects are every moment gaining admission, through that small aperture, and entering into the outward court of your mind, where they are stored up as rudunents for its future formation and growth; whilst their material images are gradually putting off, and they assume a new aspect under the higher character of intellectual ideas! Perhaps you have never, as yet, paid due attention to this singular metaphysical phenomenon, in the birth