Deucalion - pts. 1-2 Author:John Ruskin Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. THE THEEE J5EA8. (Part of a Lecture given at the London Institution in March, 1875, with added pieces from, Lectures in Oxford.) 1. We are n... more »ow, so many of us, some restlessly and some wisely, in the habit of spending our evenings abroad, that I do not know if any book exists to occupy the place of one classical in my early days, called ' Evenings at Home.' It contained, among many well-written lessons, one, under the title of ' Eyes and No Eyes,' which some of my older hearers may remember, and which I should myself be sorry to forget. For if such a book were to be written in these days, I suppose the title and the moral, of the story would both be changed; and, instead of ' Eyes and No Eyes,' the tale would be called ' Microscopes and No Microscopes.' For I observe that the prevailing habit of learned men is now to take interest only in objects which cannot be seen without the aid of instruments; and I believe many of my learned friends, if they were permitted to make themselves, to their own liking, instead of suffering the slow process of selective development, would givethemselves heads like wasps', with three microscopic eyes in the middle of their foreheads, and two ears at the ends of their antennae. 2. It is the fashion, in modern days, to say that Pope was no poet. Probably our schoolboys also, think Horace none. They have each, nevertheless, built for themselves a monument of enduring wisdom ; and all the temptations and errors of our own day, in the narrow sphere of lenticular curiosity, were anticipated by Pope, and rebuked, in one couplet: " Why has not man a microscopic eye ? For this plain reason,—Man is not a fly." "While the nobler following lines, " Say, what avail, were finer optics given To inspect a mite, not comprehend the he...« less