t and touch,
which before enabled us to regulate our actions by the eye, it would now
be rendered utterly unserviceable to that purpose.

87. Upon the whole it seems that if we consider the use and end of sight,
together with the present state and circumstances of our being, we shall
not find any great cause to complain of any defect or imperfection in it,
or easily conceive how it could be mended. With such admirable wisdom is
that faculty contrived, both for the pleasure and convenience of life.

88. Having finished what I intended to say concerning the distance and
magnitude of objects, I come now to treat of the manner wherein the mind
perceives by sight their situation. Among the discoveries of the last
age, it is reputed none of the least that the manner of vision hath been
more clearly explained than ever it had been before. There is at this day
no one ignorant that the pictures of external objects are painted on the
RETINA, or fund of the eye: that we can see nothing which is not so
painted: and that, according as the picture is more distinct or confused,
so also is the perception we have of the object: but then in this
explication of vision there occurs one mighty difficulty. The objects are
painted in an inverted order on the bottom of the eye: the upper part of
any object being painted on the lower part of the eye, and the lower part
of the object on the upper part of the eye: and so also as to right and
left. Since therefore the pictures are thus inverted, it is demanded how
it comes to pass that we see the objects erect and in their natural
posture?

89. In answer to this difficulty we are told that the mind, perceiving an
impulse of a ray of light on the upper part of the eye, considers this
ray as coming in a direct line from the lower part of the object; and in
like manner tracing the ray that strikes on the lower part of the eye, it
is directed to the upper part of the object. Thus in the adjacent figure,
C, the lower point of the object ABC, is projected on C the upper part of
the eye. So likewise the highest point A is projected on A the lowest
part of the eye, which makes the representation CBA inverted: but the
mind considering the stroke that is made on C as coming in the straight
line CC from the lower end of the object; and the stroke or impulse on a
as coming in the line AA from the upper end of the object, is directed to
make a right judgment of the situation of the object ABC, notwithstanding