The best optic is a perfect natural eye and a sound judgement; but art, for the most part, makes hermaphroditical figures — that is, mixed figures, partly natural and partly artificial. Concave and convex glasses do not show the truth but misshape it: if the edge of a knife appears under the microscope like a rough saw, we cannot conclude that the knife is such, but only that the glass presents it so.
A louse, by the help of a magnifying glass, appears like a lobster; yet the microscope has never discovered the interior motions of any creature — nor can the beholder thereby so much as prevent the biting of the louse.
Nature is a self-moving, and consequently a self-living and self-knowing infinite body: there is no part of nature that has not life and knowledge, sense and reason. I cannot believe that matter is dead, moved only from without, like a puppet drawn by strings.
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