第85章

The same thing is shown also by the morbid affections of each kind of sight.Cataract attacks the blue-eyed more, but what is called 'nyctalopia' the dark-eyed.Now cataract is a sort of dryness of the eyes and therefore it is found more in the aged, for this part also like the rest of the body gets dry towards old age; but is an excess of liquidity and so is found more in the younger, for their brain is more liquid.

The sight of the eye which is intermediate between too much and too little liquid is the best, for it has neither too little so as to be disturbed and hinder the movement of the colours, nor too much so as to cause difficulty of movement.

Not only the above-mentioned facts are causes of seeing keenly or the reverse, but also the nature of the skin upon what is called the pupil.This ought to be transparent, and it is necessary that the transparent should be thin and white and even, thin that the movement coming from without may pass straight through it, even that it may not cast a shade the liquid behind it by wrinkling (for this also is a reason why old men have not keen sight, the skin of the eye like the rest of the skin wrinkling and becoming thicker in old age), and white because black is not transparent, for that is just what is meant by 'black', what is not shone through, and that is why lanterns cannot give light if they be made of black skin.It is for these reasons then that the sight is not keen in old age nor in the diseases in question, but it is because of the small amount of liquid that the eyes of children appear blue at first.

And the reason why men especially and horses occasionally are heteroglaucous is the same as the reason why man alone grows grey and the horse is the only other animal whose hairs whiten visibly in old age.For greyness is a weakness of the fluid in the brain and an incapacity to concoct properly, and so is blueness of the eyes; excess of thinness or of thickness produces the same effect, according as this liquidity is too little or too much.Whenever then Nature cannot make the eyes correspond exactly, either by concocting or by not concocting the liquid in both, but concocts the one and not the other, then the result is heteroglaucia.

The cause of some animals being keen-sighted and others not so is not simple but double.For the word 'keen' has pretty much a double sense (and this is the case in like manner with hearing and smelling).In one sense keen sight means the power of seeing at a distance, in another it means the power of distinguishing as accurately as possible the objects seen.These two faculties are not necessarily combined in the same individual.For the same person, if he shades his eyes with his hand or look through a tube, does not distinguish the differences of colour either more or less in any way, but he will see further; in fact, men in pits or wells sometimes see the stars.Therefore if any animal's brows project far over the eye, but if the liquid in the pupil is not pure nor suited to the movement coming from external objects and if the skin over the surface is not thin, this animal will not distinguish accurately the differences of the colours but it will be able to see from a long distance (just as it can from a short one) better than those in which the liquid and the covering membrane are pure but which have no brows projecting over the eyes.For the cause of seeing keenly in the sense of distinguishing the differences is in the eye itself; as on a clean garment even small stains are visible, so also in a pure sight even small movements are plain and cause sensation.But it is the position of the eyes that is the cause of seeing things far off and of the movements in the transparent medium coming to the eyes from distant objects.A proof of this is that animals with prominent eyes do not see well at a distance, whereas those which have their eyes lying deep in the head can see things at a distance because the movement is not dispersed in space but comes straight to the eye.

For it makes no difference whether we say, as some do, that seeing is caused by the sight going forth from the eye- on that view, if there is nothing projecting over the eyes, the sight must be scattered and so less of it will fall on the objects of vision and things at a distance will not be seen so well- or whether we say that seeing is due to the movement coming from the objects; for the sight also must see, in a manner resembling the movement.Things at a distance, then, would be seen best if there were, so to say, a continuous tube straight from the sight to its object, for the movement from the object would not then be dissipated; but, if that is impossible, still the further the tube extends the more accurately must distant objects be seen.

Let these, then, be given as the causes of the difference in eyes.