The physician can so train his eye that he has merely to look closely at the patient to determine the nature of his disease; while the microscopist, the geologist, and the astronomer acquire such accuracy from their close and long continued investigations that they can detect the least change in the appearance of the heavens above or the earth beneath.
But the astronomer may have his eyes so fixed on the stars that he can not observe what is going on below; the geologist may be able to analyze a stone and tell to which stratum it belongs, and yet take no interest in anything that is above ground; and the devoted student of the microscope may be so entranced by the wonders continually opening before him, that he is utterly oblivious to all else surrounding him. Without this habit of observation, the world would have had no Galileo, no Humboldt, no Newton, no Agassiz, no Hugh Miller, no Edison,[3] and no progress. But all are not gifted in the same way; and often the sphere we move in or the place in which we are born, determines and decides our calling, and controls our habits to a very great extent. It is natural that one accustomed to an open country should have his eyes attracted toward the heavens, which are constantly revealing new wonders; and that one brought up among the rocks should take to hammering them to bits, boy-like, to see of what they are made, or how they look inside.
The differences between men consist in a great measure in the intelligence of their observation. The Russian proverb says: “He goes through the forest and sees no firewood.” “The wise man’s eyes are in his head,” says Solomon, “but the fool walketh in darkness.” It is the mind that sees as well as the eye. Where unthinking gazers observe nothing, men of intelligent vision penetrate into the very fiber of the phenomena presented to them, attentively noting differences, making comparisons and recognizing their underlying idea. Many before Galileo had seen a suspended weight swing before their eyes with a measured beat; but he was the first to detect the value of the fact.
One of the vergers[4] in the cathedral at Pisa,[5] after replenishing with oil a lamp which hung from the roof, left it swinging to and fro; and Galileo, then a youth of only eighteen, noting it attentively, conceived the idea of applying to it the measurement of time. Fifty years of study and labor elapsed before he completed the invention of his pendulum—the importance of which, in the measurement of time and in astronomical calculations, can scarcely be overrated. In like manner, Galileo having heard that a Dutch spectacle-maker had presented to Count Maurice, of Nassau,[6] an instrument by means of which distant objects appeared nearer to the beholder, began to inquire into the cause of such a phenomena, and this led to the invention of the telescope, and proved the beginning of the modern science of astronomy.
While Captain (afterward Sir Samuel) Brown[7] was occupied in studying the construction of bridges, with the view of contriving one of a cheap description to be thrown across the Tweed, near which he lived, he was walking in his garden one morning when he saw a tiny spider’s web suspended across his path. The idea immediately occurred to him that a bridge of iron ropes or chains might be constructed in like manner, and the result was the invention of his suspension bridge.
So James Watt,[8] when consulted about the mode of carrying water by pipes under the Clyde, along the unequal bed of the river, turned his attention one day to the shell of a lobster presented at table, and from that model he invented an iron tube, which, when laid down, was found effectually to answer the purpose.
Sir Isambard Brunel[9] took his first lessons in forming the Thames tunnel from the tiny ship-worm; he saw how the little creature perforated the wood with its well-armed head, first in one direction and then in another, till the archway was complete, and then daubed over the roof and sides with a kind of varnish, and by copying this work on a large scale, Brunel was at length enabled to construct his shield and accomplish his great engineering work.
It is the intelligent eye of the careful observer which gives these apparently trivial phenomena their value. So trifling a matter as the sight of seaweed floating past his ship enabled Columbus to quell the mutiny which arose amongst his sailors at not discovering land, and to assure them that the eagerly sought New World was not far off.
It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of success in business, in art, in science, and in every pursuit in life. When Franklin made his discovery of the identity of lightning and electricity, it was sneered at, and people asked, “Of what use is it?” To which his reply was, “What is the use of a child? It may become a man!” The great Cuvier[10] was a singularly accurate, careful, and industrious observer. When a boy he was attracted to the subject of natural history by the sight of a volume of Buffon,[11] which accidentally fell in his way. He at once proceeded to copy the drawings, and to color them after the descriptions given in the text. At eighteen he was offered the situation of tutor in a family residing near Fécamp, in Normandy. Living close to the seashore, he was brought face to face with the wonders of marine life. Strolling along the sands one day he observed a stranded cuttle-fish.[12] He was attracted by the curious object, took it home to dissect, and thus began the study of the molluscæ, in the pursuit of which he achieved so distinguished a reputation. He had no books to refer to excepting only the great book of nature which lay open before him. The study of the novel and interesting objects which it daily presented to his eyes made a much deeper impression on his mind than any written or engraved descriptions could possibly have done. Three years thus passed, during which he compared the living specimens of marine animals with the fossil remains found in the neighborhood, dissected the specimens of marine life that came under his notice, and, by careful observation, prepared the way for a complete reform in the classification of the animal kingdom.
The life of Hugh Miller furnishes another illustration of the advantage of making a good use of the eyes. While Hugh was but a child, his father, who was a sailor, was drowned at sea, and he was brought up by his widowed mother. He had a school training after a sort, but his best teachers were the boys with whom he played, the men among whom he worked, the friends and relatives with whom he lived. With a big hammer which had belonged to his great-grandfather, an old buccaneer, the boy went about chipping the stones and accumulating specimens of mica, porphyry, garnet, and other stones. Sometimes he had a day in the woods, and there, too, his attention was excited by the peculiar geological curiosities which came in his way. While searching among the rocks on the beach, he was sometimes asked, in irony, by the farm-servants who came to load their carts with seaweed, whether he was getting “siller in the stanes,” but was so unlucky as never to be able to answer in the affirmative. When of a suitable age he was apprenticed to the trade of his choice—that of a working stone cutter—and he began his laboring career in a quarry looking out upon the Cromarty Firth.[13] This quarry proved one of his best schools. The remarkable geological formations which it displayed awakened his curiosity. The bar of deep-red stone beneath, and the bar of pale-red clay above, were noted by the young quarryman, who even in such unpromising subjects found matter for observation and reflection. Where other men saw nothing, he detected analogies, differences, and peculiarities which set him thinking. He simply kept his eyes and his mind open; was sober, diligent and persevering, and this was the secret of his intellectual growth.