On the Optical Meaning of the Orientation Laws

Abstract

It is clear that the motor apparatus of the visual organ must match its sensory apparatus as the shell does the egg. Whether one assumes that both are arranged according to a wise plan, or that they have developed with one another and through one another in naturally necessary ways through the animal series, in any case the capabilities of one must bespeak the demands of the other. It follows that the eye muscles are practical, as they indeed are, and that it is not so much that we have become accustomed to our twelve eye muscles in the progress of our individual lives, but that the mode of eye movement is not solely the result of a free will directed by specific demands of the sense of sight. On the contrary, its important movements are predetermined by the inborn muscle system.