Eye Measuring—See [Training].
EYE, THE EVIL
The power exerted by the human eye over man and animals is well known, and the evil use of such influence is widely recognized. This maleficent power is called the “evil eye,” and the belief in its operation seems never to have been absent in any land. This does not mean the undoubted influence exerted by the eye, as in mesmerism, but a sort of noxious influence proceeding from the eye, with or without the connivance of the owner of the organ. Intelligence of a belief in this strange power comes to us from the cradle lands of the East, at an unknown period of history. Chaldean cylinders of clay dug up on the banks of the Euphrates contain magical formula against it. In Assyria, eight centuries before Christ, men appealed to their gods in long formulated prayers against possessors of the evil eye, who are declared the worst of men. Egyptian incantations against the sorcerer, of an early date, have come down to us. In one of these the sun is addrest thus: “O, thou whose soul is in the pupil of the eye.” An ancient Vedaic hymn to Agni invokes Indra against the evil eye. The eye of the Brahman was thought so powerful that he was forbidden, when satisfying the wants of nature, to look at the sun, the moon, the stars, water, or trees, lest he should bewitch them. The Persian Vendidad contains prayers and rites to ward off the effects of the evil eye. Ahriman subdued evil spirits by the power of his glance.—St. Louis Globe-Democrat.
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Eye, The Human—See [Design in Nature].
EYE, THE SEARCHING
In a poem by Victor Hugo, Cain is represented as walking thirty days and nights after the murder of his brother Abel until he reaches the shores of the sea. “Let us stop here,” he says; but as he sits down his face turns pale. He has seen in the mournful sky the searching eye. His sons, filled with awe, try to erect barriers between him and the Eye—a tent, then a wall of iron, then a tower and a city—but all is in vain. “I see the Eye,” still cries the unhappy man. At last they dig a tomb and the father is put into it. But
“Tho overhead they closed the awful vault,
The Eye was in the tomb and looked on Cain.” (Text.)
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