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Seeing Space
Dedicated to Joanna Crone-Ravestein,
my guardian angel in later years
Seeing Space
Robert A. Crone
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Applied for

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.

“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Copyright # 2003 Swets & Zeitlinger B.V., Lisse,The Netherlands

All rights reserved. No part of this publication or the information contained herein
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, by photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
written prior permission from the publishers.

Although all care is taken to ensure the integrity and quality of this publication and
the information herein, no responsibility is assumed by the publishers nor the author
for any damage to property or persons as a result of operation or use of this
publication and/or the information contained herein.
Published by: Swets & Zeitlinger Publishers
www.szp.swets.nl
ISBN 0-203-97104-3 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 90 265 1955 9 (Print Edition)

Contents

Preface xi
Acknowledgements xiii

Part I 1
1. A Short History of Space 3
Space in ancient times 3
Space theory in the Middle Ages 4
Space in the Renaissance 5
Newton’s space 5
The geometry of space 6
How empty is space? 6
The principle of special relativity 6
The principle of general relativity 7
The quantum theory 7
Objective space 9

2. Perceptual Space 11
Historical notes 11
Locke: Primary and secondary features 11
Berkeley 12
Kant 12
Biological aspects of spatial localisation 14
Psychological aspects of spatial localisation 14
Animals and psychology 14
Psychological description of the human being 15
Real space as proof station for phenomenal space 15
The place of biology and psychology in a pluralistic world 16
The area between perception and action 17

3. Non-Visual Spatial Perception 19

Introduction 19
The organ of equilibrium 19
Kinaesthesis and touch 20
Touch and vision in historical perspective 20
Nativism and empirism 22

vii
Part II: The Visual Perception of Space 25
4. Some Basic Facts about the Visual System 27
The eye and the ocular muscles 27
The optics of the eye 27
The eye muscles and eye movements 28
The retina 29
The visual pathways 34
A short history of neural localisation 38

5. The Evolution of the Eye and the Movements of the Eye 43

The evolution of the eye 43
The evolution of the eye movements 46
Compensatory movements and binocular optomotor reflexes 46
Monocular eye movements 47
The fovea and the visual fixation of prey 48
Binocular vision and convergence in the chameleon and in fish 49
Depth vision and disparity 51
Binocular vision in birds 51
Depth perception and the semidecussation of the optic nerves in
mammals: corresponding binocular points 52
Semidecussation and conjugate movements 54

6. Directional Vision 55
Introduction 55
Directional vision and eye movements 55
Retinal local signs 56
The influence of compensatory eye movements on directional vision 56
Influence of gaze movements 58
Directional vision with two eyes 59
The range of directional vision 59
The visual field 60
The charting of the visual field in the brain 61
Charting the visual field in the area striata 62
Precision of directional vision 65
The precision of the motor system 65
The subjective precision of directional vision 67
Visual acuity, optics and contrast 68
The optical quality 70
Contrast 71
Visual systems analysis 71
The neurophysiology of the visual acuity 74
The retina 75
The lateral geniculate body 77
The visual cortex 77
Visual systems analysis and neurophysiology 78
The pathology of directional vision 79

viii Contents
7. Stereoscopic Perception of Depth 83
A model of binocular vision 83
The history of binocular depth perception 86
Some psycho-physiological aspects of stereopsis 93
Physiological double vision: the range of the oblique connections 93
The horopter 95
The limits of depth perception 96
Estimation of absolute stereoscopic depth 96
Estimation of relative stereoscopic depth 97
Fusion: vision below the threshold of stereoscopic vision 98
Range of fusion 99
The fusion curve and the motor role of disparity 99
Rivalry, suppression and dominance 101
Dominance 102
The psychophysics of stereograms 102
Julesz’ random dots pattern 104
Stereoscopy and vergence 108
The neurophysiology of binocular vision 109
The neurophysiology of disjunctive movements 111

8. The Pathology of Binocular Depth Perception:

Squint and Amblyopia 113
Squint (Strabismus) 113
A short history of squint 113
Abnormal binocular vision 117
The cause of squint 119
The ontogeny of binocular vision 120
Amblyopia 121
Neurophysiology of amblyopia 122

9. The Perception of Movement 125

Introduction 125
Three forms of movement perception 125
Movement perception with a stationary eye 125
Movement perception with the following eye 127
Following movements and parafoveal fixation 127
Apparent movement 128
Wandering stars 128
Induced movement 129
The waterfall illusion 129
The film 130
The neurophysiology of movement perception 130
The pathology of movement perception 130

10. Theories of the visual perception of space 133

Introduction 133

Contents ix
The psychological theory of spatial vision in historical perspective 133
Johannes Kepler and the projection theory 134
The sensorimotor theory of spatial vision in historical perspective 137
Descartes 137
Lotze 138
Roelofs and the principle of equivalence 140
Stability and plasticity of visual orientation 140
The future of a sensorimotor theory of spatial localisation 143

Part III: Identification of Objects in Space 145

11. Contours and Surfaces 147
Introduction 147
Contours, contrasts and the primary sketch 150
The perception of surfaces 152

12. Seeing Objects in Depth 157

Perspective 157
Other pictorial depth effects 160
Necker’s cube 160
Depth perception through movement 161
The objective form of objects 162

13. The Perception of Size 167

Introduction 167
Emmert’s law 167
The sizes of the sun and the moon: a historical digression 168

14. The Neurophysiology and Neuropathology of the

Perception of Objects 171
Introduction 171
Unsolved problems 172

References 175

Index 181

x Contents
Preface

Space, like light and colour, is a fundamental aspect ofvision. A number of publica-
tions on spatial vision have been made. Most of them are concerned with details
which are hardly accessible because of their high degree of specialisation in the
areas of neurophysiology, systems theory, philosophy or psychology. This book
aims at a brief non-specialised survey of the whole subject. I have tried to explain
difficult things in a simple way, to keep the style light and to offer the reader relaxa-
tion every now and then with a historical digression. I have not given detailed infor-
mation about differing points of view, but have given preference to the insights I
have acquired myself as an ophthalmologist during many decennia of clinical and
theoretical work. Seeing Space has been written for eye specialists, ophthalmic
opticians, psychologists and other practitioners of visual science, and also for any-
one possessing some knowledge of science who is interested in spatial vision.
The book contains three parts. Part I describes general aspects of space and spa-
tial perception. Part II begins with a short, elementary survey of the visual system
(Chapter 4). As eye movements are of crucial importance for spatial vision, the evo-
lution of the eye and the eye movements is elaborated in Chapter 5. The specific
characteristics of spatial vision, the recognition of direction, depth and movement,
are treated in the other chapters of Part II. Part III describes the spatial identifica-
tion of visual objects.

xi
Acknowledgements

I am indebted toWim van de Grind, former professor of comparative physiology in

Utrecht and to Huib Simonsz, professor of ophthalmology in Rotterdam for their
valuable comments. I also thank the translator Kathleen Boet-Herbert for translat-
ing my Dutch. My publisher, Swets and Zeitlinger, has helped me greatly with the
editing of the manuscript.
This book is an adaptation of the chapter ‘Localisation’ in Diplopia (1973, 1993)
and the chapters on spatial vision in Licht^Kleur^Ruimte (1992, in Dutch). Most of
the illustrations have been reproduced with permission from these two sources.The
author would like to acknowledge the permission to reproduce the figures which
were not included in earlier work. In all cases the origin of the figure has been indi-
cated in the legend to the figure.

xiii
Part I
 1. A Short History of Space1

‘Space’ is a word that we use every day, but if anyone were to ask us what space is, it
becomes apparent that it is a mystery. Space has something to do with the position
of things, but exactly what the relationship is is difficult to say. We don’t always
mean the same thing when we say ‘space.’ When a billiard player says that there is
space between two billiard balls which are lying close together, he obviously means
what is lying between things.When a cancer surgeon speaks of a ‘space-occupying
lesion,’ he means something quite different: the measurements of the thing itself,
which is growing and threatening life. And finally, when one speaks of space travel,
one thinks of space as an infinite ocean in which Gagarin and Armstrong have
dipped their toes.

SPACE IN ANCIENT TIMES

The pre-Socratic Greek philosophers (600^400 BC) already discovered how diffi-
cult it is to say what space is. Is space the void between things which really exist? But
if the void is non-existent, isn’t the spatial separation only an illusion? This was the
point reached by Parmenides of Elea (500 BC), who only recognized fullness, the
plenum, as reality, and considered ultimate reality to be found in the form of a sphere
(a sort of neutron star, as we should say now).
To the atomist Democritus of Abdera (400 BC) empty space was as real as mat-
ter. Reality consisted of an infinite number of atoms floating between infinite empti-
ness. How could space possibly be finite? Lucretius, the Latin poet of atomism
(75 BC), put it like this: If someone stands near the end of space and throws a
spear, the spear does not suddenly stop at the boundary of space. Therefore, space
must be infinite. There is a striking resemblance between the atomists’ ideas and
those of classical physics (which owes a lot to the rehabilitation of atomism in the
Renaissance). But space was something different to the ancient atomists than
to Newton: it was not the surroundings in which the atoms existed, but the gaps
(diastema) between the atoms.
Aristotle (350 BC) rejects atomism on account of his own view of the world.
For Aristotle the universe is finite, with the earth at the centre. Around it are

1
Jammer, 1954.

3
concentric spheres: the spheres of the moon, the sun, the planets and the fixed
stars. Space has an internal structure, which causes heavy objects in the sublunary
sphere to fall downwards, in the direction of their ‘natural place,’ the centre of the
universe, and light objects, such as fire, to move in the opposite direction. In the
spheres of the planets and the fixed stars, the natural direction of movement is
circular. In the heavens, where other laws apply than in the sublunary sphere,
there must be a different substance (not fire, water, air or earth), a fifth element, a
quinta essentia.
Aristotle avoids the abstract idea of space and concentrates on the psychologi-
cally more accessible idea of place. He tries to define the place where a material
object is. Naturally that isn’t the object itself; the place is only incidental, an acci-
dens, which really exists, but has no independent existence like a substantial body. It
is the enveloping boundary of the body. A moving object frees itself from its old
place, and takes over a new place in space. The outer sphere of the universe has no
enveloping boundary, thus no place and no limit.
Aristotle is convinced that a vacuum is an impossibility and is profuse in argu-
ments to disprove the existence of a void. An example: if material objects were in a
void, nothing would be able to make them move, and if they were moving, nothing
would be able to stop them; for that matter: bodies of different weights would all fall
in a void at the same high speed, an assumption which was in disagreement with
Aristotle’s physical ideas (which did not include inertia and gravity).
Contrary to Aristotle, the Stoa, a later philosophical school, believed that
an empty space did exist outside the universe. The universe did not spread into this
void because it has an inner cohesion, its own tension (tonos). Posidonius (100 BC)
discovered that the tides were caused by the moon, a strong argument for the exist-
ence of this tension. But the ‘extracosmic’ void could not be missed, because the
world was subjected to cycles of thermic expansion and contraction. We are
reminded of modern hypotheses about the ‘Big Bang’ and the ‘Big Crunch,’ but
also of ideas about Perpetual Return, as found in Oriental religions, and also in
Nietzsche.

SPACE THEORY IN THE MIDDLE AGES

In the Middle Ages, Judaeo-Christian theology took over space. This led to
extremely difficult problems and sharply conflicting views.The Jewish philosopher
Philo (25 AD) considered that space existed before the Creation as the omnipre-
sence of God, but Augustine (400 AD) thought that God was within Himself (in
seipso) before the first day of creation: space only existed after God had created hea-
ven and earth. But what sort of space was it? Aristotle’s finite intracosmic plenum
didn’t appear to offer any room for God’s omnipresence. The infinite extracosmic
space assumed by the Stoa, did not seem suitable either: if God is infinite and
omnipresent, he can hardly create infinite space and stay out of it himself. Realiza-
tion of this leads inevitably to the idea that God himself is the infinite space. This
final idea led, in point of fact, to the divinisation of space. As long as no features,
such as dimensionality, structure or content, were ascribed to God’s Immensity,
no theological objections to this divinisation arose.

4 Seeing Space
 SPACE IN THE RENAISSANCE2
When, in the Renaissance, Aristotle’s authority began to wane, people began to
wonder if nature really abhorred a vacuum. It was difficult to explain how water
could be sucked upwards in a straw against its natural direction. Is the water not
only obedient to its own nature (natura particularis) but also to a heavenly power
(virtus celestis)? In the middle of the seventeenth centuryTorricelli and Pascal radic-
ally disposed of the theory of horror vacui.
Acquaintance with the antique atomic theory also helped to make people less
afraid of a vacuum, and they began to assume that extracosmic and intracosmic
space were one. This had important consequences. It was already agreed that the
space in the world had a three-dimensional structure, but now the assumption was
made that this was also true for infinite space. Gassendi, (1564^1642) whose opin-
ions resembled those of Democritus and Epicurus, described space as non-
created, infinite, immovable, three-dimensional, empty and objectively existing. He
was one of the most important precursors of Newtonian science; although he was
a priest, he refused to identify God with space.The English theologian Henry More
(1642^1727), on the other hand, did not abandon the medieval divinisation of space
and reached the radical conclusion that God is a three-dimensional being. This
point of view was unacceptable for most people, almost as unacceptable as
Spinoza’s idea that God and nature are one (una substantia sive deus sive natura).
Even so, Newton has been influenced by More. He says that we, human beings,
only have images of things ‘in our little sensoriums’ but that God exercises his will
‘in his boundless uniform sensorium,’ the still divinised absolute space.

NEWTON’S SPACE3
We leave theology for the moment and consider how Newton arrived at the idea of
infinite, homogeneous, three-dimensional, immovable and absolute space. The
death-blow had, in fact, already been delivered to the Aristotelean system of the
world by Copernicus’ heliocentric system (1543). Kepler discovered the elliptic
path of the planets (1609) and Newton discovered that the same force that causes
heavy objects to fall downwards on earth is responsible for the paths of the moon
and the planets (1687). This undermined Aristotle’s theory that different laws of
movement applied in the sublunar world than outside it. But that did not prove
that space was
as Gassendi thought
absolute, immovable and infinite. Galileo
had even stated that movement and immobility were relative terms. If an object was
dropped from a tower it landed at the foot of the tower and if the same object was
dropped from the crow’s nest of a sailing ship it landed at the foot of the mast. But
Newton declared that this relativity principle only applied in the kinematic sense:
for spatial systems which were moving in a linear, uniform manner in relation to
each other. When reference systems revolve in relation to each other, different
dynamic laws apply. If the water in a revolving bucket is made to revolve, the water
rises against the inside wall of the bucket. In this case one of the systems revolves

2
Grant, 1981.
3
Westfall, 1980.

A Short History of Space 5

and centrifugal forces are produced, while the other, absolute space, remains sta-
tionary and is therefore not subjected to any forces. In addition to absolute space,
Newton also believed in absolute time.
Newton had influential critics, among them Leibnitz. Leibnitz declared, in a
famous correspondence with Newton’s representative Clarke, that space was only
something relative, an order of coexistence of things, just as time was relative, an
order of successive events. The tenor of the correspondence between Leibnitz and
Clarke was mainly theological. Leibnitz opposed the theory that space was God or
one of his attributes. But Leibnitz had no answer to Newton’s dynamic argument.
In this way theology retreated from the field of space and Newton was victorious
on physical grounds, a victory which for centuries would not be contested. But then
two important new insights into physical space arose, which were to sound the knell
of Newton’s absolute space. The first insight was mathematical: the geometry of
space; the secondwasphysical: problems concerning the etherandthefields offorce.

THE GEOMETRY OF SPACE

Newton saw his space, in agreement with Gassendi and his supporters, as infinite,
boundless, immovable, homogeneous and three-dimensional. In this empty space
particles of a given mass were moving according to the laws of mechanics, which
were subject to Euclidean geometry. For Newton Euclidean geometry was literally
the geometry of the earth, and as such a branch of mechanics.
Later, the perception grew that Euclidean geometry reflected the real world, but
that other forms of geometry were conceivable, which might not be applicable to
the real world, but to other
possible, hypothetical
worlds in which there are
more than three dimensions or where space is curved and perhaps not even infinite.
I mention only the German mathematician Riemann (1854), who demonstrated
that so-called elliptic space could be finite, boundless and homogeneous at the
same time.

HOW EMPTY IS SPACE?

Even in antiquity the ether was recognized, the quinta essentia which fills the space
between the planets and between the fixed stars. Newton also fell back on this mys-
terious substance here and there in his Opticks (1704), and when Thomas Young
demonstrated that light consisted of vibrations (1802), it had to be accepted that
space was filled with ether which formed the medium for the vibrations of light.
On another plane also, space was found to be less empty than had been assumed.
Faraday (1791^1867) sprinkled iron filings on a sheet of paper and held a magnet
under it. The iron filings arranged themselves into lines of force. Apparently space
was not only a void filled with material objects, but it was also a field of forces. Space
had structure. The Scottish physicist Maxwell, who combined electricity and mag-
netism into one system, attempted to define this structure (1873).

THE PRINCIPLE OF SPECIAL RELATIVITY

The study of asymmetries between electricity and magnetism led Einstein to the
conclusion that physical laws always have the same validity independent of the

6 Seeing Space
reference system in which the researcher is making his measurements (1905; see
Einstein, 1917).With this conclusion he finally laid to rest Newton’s absolute space
and the ether. There were two conditions: the reference systems had to move with
constant velocity and in a rectilinear direction (as in Galileo’s relativity principle),
and the speed of light, which necessarily influences the measurements, had to be
taken into consideration. In this way, time became included in every physical calcu-
lation. Relativistic physics doesn’t think any more in terms of three-dimensional
space but in a four-dimensional space-time continuum. In relation to spatial vision,
the subject of this book, this relativity principle is not important.The speed of light
is so great that it makes no difference whether one looks out of the window of a mov-
ing car or of one that is standing still. If the speed of light were 30 km per hour
instead of 300,000 km per second4, the relativity principle would have a great influ-
ence on how we see the world. A moving cyclist would appear much thinner than a
stationary one and, at the same time, the cyclist would see the people on the pave-
ment suddenly become much thinner as he rode away (Fig. 1.1).

THE PRINCIPLE OF GENERAL RELATIVITY

In Einstein’s general theory of relativity, gravity, which is nothing more than a uni-
form acceleration, is included in the equivalence of physical reference systems
(1915; see Einstein,1917).This mathematical operation demanded that the structure
of space should be positively curved in Riemann’s sense, and thereby finite,
although unbounded. In addition, distortions of space in the vicinity of celestial
bodies had to be assumed. With the theory of general relativity, therefore, Newto-
nian space lost both its claim to infinity and its homogeneity. It soon became appar-
ent that stellar systems are moving away from each other at great speed. Space is
expanding, and had evidently been formed by a sort of explosion, the Big Bang.
The theory of general relativity is indispensable to astronomy, but makes no differ-
ence to the world as we see it.

THE QUANTUM THEORY

Just as the theory of relativity is too big for human vision, microphysics, quantum
mechanics, is too small. It is not important for our macroscopic behaviour in space,
that energy is subdivided into units (quanta) and multiples of these (Planck, 1900).
Even though there is tremendous unrest in the world of small things, and the fluc-
tuations become greater as the area examined becomes smaller, we are completely
unaware of it, because all the unrest is statistically levelled out in the world which
lies open to our senses.
The theory of large things and the theory of small things are difficult to recon-
cile with each other.The wild fluctuations on the ultramicroscopic scale, as implied
by the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, are irreconcilable with the
sleek geometry of time-space which is the central principle of general relativity.
The string theory is an attempt to solve this paradox5. In this book it is only

4
Gamov, 1940.
5
Greene, 1999.

A Short History of Space 7

Fig. 1.1. If the speed of light were 30 Km/h the cyclist would look very thin from the pave-
ment and the houses would appear very narrow to the cyclist (after Gamov, 1940).

8 Seeing Space
important to know that the string theory operates in a world with ten or more
dimensions. For the reader’s peace of mind it may be said that even the string theory
allots no more than three dimensions to macroscopic space; the other dimensions
are, so to speak, the curled-up dimensions of a microworld. Even so, from Newton’s
absolute, homogeneous, infinite and three-dimensional world, the last attribute,
the three-dimensionality, is now being called into question.

OBJECTIVE SPACE
The space, of which the history is sketched above, is distinguished as real space from
geometrical spaces which are only a possibility, and also from any space which owes
its existence solely to one or more
necessarily subjective
sensory qualities. Real
space can also be called physical space, because it is not filled with visible, audible
or tangible things, but with measurable objects. Because measurements can be veri-
fied or disproved by anybody, real space is also called objective space.
Classical physics has cut the connection between objective reality and the
senses.That has led to enormous successes, to astonishing but completelydehuman-
ised (without sensory information) knowledge. The separation of objective reality
and the observer has, however, not been completely successful. Quantum mecha-
nics is based once more on two corner-stones: the reality and the observer. In this
case it is not the painting of reality in the colours of the human senses, but the altera-
tion of reality by the action of a human measuring instrument.

A Short History of Space 9

 2. Perceptual Space

HISTORICAL NOTES
In the previous chapter the objective features of space have been characterized; the
question now arises how the spatial characteristics of things are perceived. To
acquaint the reader with divergent theories, I introduce three founders of episte-
mology: Locke, Berkeley and Kant.

LOCKE: PRIMARYAND SECONDARY FEATURES

The explosive growth of physics during the scientific revolution is due to exclusive
attention for the spatial, quantitative aspects of nature, associated with neglect of
the sensory information. Galileo said that the book of nature was written in math-
ematical language. Scents, sounds and tastes were solely human experiences. Des-
cartes, one of the most prominent theorists of mechanistic physics, made a rigid
distinction between spatial magnitude, the extensio, and the cogitatio, thinking
and feeling, including the special senses.
With his mechanics of the heavens, expounded in the Principia, Newton was
able to give the final touch to the mechanistic vision of the world. In his other
book, the Opticks (1704), however, he could not avoid to discuss the mental sensa-
tion of colour. In his research into the prismatic colour spectrum he managed to
keep physics and psychology strictly separate. He was intensely interested in the
refraction of light, but also in the phenomenology of sensations of colour. Rays of
light, he stated, are distinguishable by their physical properties, such as the size of
the light particles, but have no colour of their own. It is only when they stimulate the
retina that colour arises in the psyche.
Locke, the English philosopher, shared his friend Newton’s opinion.The differ-
ence between the spatial and the sensory has, thanks to Locke, become defined as
the difference between primary and secondary qualities. The primary qualities
included, according to Locke, spatial extent and form, number, movement and
impenetrability. He called colour, scent, palpability and sound secondary qualities.
In his book on the theory of knowledge, his Essay Concerning Human Understand-
ing (1690), he stated that our knowledge of the primary qualities corresponds with
the things themselves, whereas our understanding of the secondary qualities of
things has no resemblance to their objective characteristics.

11
BERKELEY
The theory of primary and secondary qualities did not remain unchallenged.There
are two alternatives: either colour is as objective as space, or space is as subjective
as colour. The first alternative is called ‘naı̈ve realism,’ the second ‘idealism.’ The
English philosopher Berkeley was an idealist. He said in his Principles of Human
Knowledge (1710) that form and colour have the same status: that of sensory phe-
nomena. The form in which an object is observed is dependent on the observer. A
horse in the distance is small and a horse nearby is big; a wheel is seen as circular or
elliptical according to the position of the observer. Our sense of space is the sense of
space of the genus Mankind, and as such is subjective: a mite, according to Berkeley,
would not be able to exist if it did not have a completely different sense of space,
adjusted to shorter distances and different spatial information. Berkeley found
objective space absurd. Space is phenomenal, defined by the spatial impressions
which we receive; he denied the objective existence of matter. Esse est percipi: all
that exists is what is perceived. Berkeley is a consistent spiritualist. God’s creation
consists of nothing more than perceiving spirits and perceived sensations (ideas).
Berkeley didn’t go so far as to say that the world disappeared when one closed
one’s eyes: the world always remained in God’s sensorium. God’s spirit is the all-
embracing spirit. Because all knowledge is built up from sensory impressions,
and abstract ideas like the concept of substance are rejected, Berkeley is also a
consistent empiricist. His revolutionary theory of knowledge was inspired by his
antirevolutionary Christian conviction, unsympathetic to materialists, atheists and
free-thinkers.
Berkeley’s theory later became popular in secularised form, particularly among
psychologists and philosophers, as phenomenalism. Phenomenalism forms a poor
basis for the natural sciences. Theoretical chemistry cannot be built on scents and
colours, and without abstractions one cannot get far with Newton’s gravitation law.

KANT
Even so, it was a Newtonian who made the ‘subjectivity’ (or rather: the non-
objectivity) of space in his Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781) a corner-stone of his
philosophical system. Kant asked himself the question, what is the reason for the
irrefutable validity of Euclid’s axioms and Newton’s mechanistic laws? His answer:
space is an ‘a-priori intuition,’ a classification scheme for the human intellect into
which knowledge must organize itself. Space (and time also) does not form, for
Kant, part of the objective reality but is a product of ‘pure’ (aprioristic) human rea-
son. Kant does not elaborate on what remains of nature if all the contributions of
human reason are removed.The‘thing-in-itself’ is the source of all experience but is
not directly accessible to knowledge.
One might suppose that Kant, with his theory, had eliminated the distinction
between primary and secondary qualities, but that is far from being the case. The
sensory, such as colour, is in Kant’s view immeasurable and, on account of its indi-
vidual subjectivity, fortuitous. On the other hand, the ideality of space is ‘transcen-
dental,’ a supra-individual requirement of human knowledge. Kantian space,
although ‘de-objectified’ in the epistemological sense, remained in practice the

12 Seeing Space
‘objective’space of the physicists and not the phenomenal space of the psychologists
and their great leader, Berkeley. Kant called his own idealism ‘critical,’ in order to
distinguish it from the (in his opinion) ‘sentimental’ idealism of Berkeley.
The ideas of the Enlightenment culminated in the philosophy of Kant. His
influence was unprecedented. Together with the classical writers in Weimar, he
made a deep impression on German spiritual life. Preachers’sons and theology stu-
dents, already disturbed by the Enlightenment, adopted Kant’s doctrine.They were
more familiar with Plato, Goethe and the Gospels than with empirical natural
science. The first thing they did was throw the ‘thing-in-itself’ overboard.Without
the ballast of experience, thought could rise to speculative heights where ‘thinking
thinks itself.’
The rapid advance of the natural sciences put an end to this sort of idealism.
Materialism won the sympathy of many. As, however, materialism did not form a
sufficient basis for the sensory sciences with their mental phenomena, others
returned to Locke’s and Kant’s original theories. Hermann von Helmholtz, great
practitioner of the sensory sciences and also mathematician and physicist, had in
his theory of colour vision (based on ThomasYoung) stated that it depends on the
properties of the eye which‘signals’ we use to interpret reality. As the retina has three
sorts of receptors, our collection of colours is threefold. The retina is the ‘creator of
colour.’ Some philosophers and investigators of the special senses tried to demon-
strate that the senses which register space were, in the same way,‘creators of space.’
They hoped in this way to lay a scientific basis for Kant’s subjectivism, against
Kant’s intentions, who had specifically stated that space is not an empirical term.
All these attempts stranded. Some neo-Kantians tried to interpret space
through feelings experienced in muscles and joints, by means of which we learn
the difference between above and below, before and behind and left and right. The
physiologist Cyon used the directional feelings produced by the three semicircular
canals of the organ of equilibrium. His article (1901) had the characteristic titleThe
physiological basis of Euclid’s geometry. A solution of the space problem. Unhappily
the semicircular canals were already expressed in spatial terms. The argument was
thus begging the question, it was a petitio principii.
We have now heard three philosophers who, in spite of all their brain-racking,
were not able to formulate an idea of space which is acceptable to us.
Locke represented the position of the new natural science from Galileo to
Newton. He made two mistakes. In the first place, we don’t observe space ‘as it is.’
Our observation is, as far as the visual observation is concerned, dependent on our
own viewpoint and the properties of the eye. In the second place, it is a scientistic
error to think that sounds (mental sensatione which can be scientifically reduced to
vibrations in the air), are less real than vibrations in the air.
Berkeley rejected the scientism of his time and argued that all our knowledge
was sensory. He was an ‘immaterialist,’ who denied the objective existence of
things. It was an extreme position which could not last. It was irreconcilable with
the natural science which was rapidly developing, and was also contrary to the daily
experience of ordinary people.
Kant tried to explain the strict validity of natural laws by the statement that
‘space’ was a fundamental category of the human spirit. This standpoint was not

Perceptual Space 13
tenable either. As explained in Chapter 1, an objective physical space exists which is
certainly not the product of the human spirit. In addition, Kant’s theory was highly
anthropocentric and no reference was made to what spatial behaviour means in the
animal world.
It seems important to us, modern people, to define space in such a way that the
definition applies for physics (Chapter 1), for biology and for the human spirit.

BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF SPATIAL LOCALISATION

Organisms have special senses that collect information which is of importance for
their lives, and pass it on to their motor apparatus, so that the organism can react
adequately to the information.
This takes place in even the most primitive animals. Unicellular organisms can
have a‘receptor’ in their cell wall which registers a gradient in the concentration of a
given fluid in their environment, and which sends this stimulus on to another part of
the cell wall, where there is a whiplash which moves the cell in the direction of the
chemical substance or in the other direction, as required.
In higher animals the ‘receptors’ are highly specialized cells which react sensi-
tively to physical or chemical changes in their environment and pass on their stimu-
lated condition via a nerve fibre. Examples of such receptors are the rods and cones
in the retina and the hair-cells in the labyrinth. The receptors are the essential part
of the sensory organs, in this case of the eye and the organ of equilibrium.We can
speak of a sensory system when the spatial information is obtained from many scat-
tered receptors. Thus mechanoreceptors in the skin, muscles and joints form a
complicated system that we call ‘proprioceptive,’ in so far as it registers stimuli
that lead to correction of the position of the body, and more broadly speaking
‘sense of touch,’ when objects in the outside world are the cause of the stimulation.
When sensory stimuli contain spatial information, movement usually occurs, a
sensorimotor reaction.Thus a falling cat positions itself while falling with the help of
stimuli from its organ of equilibrium. A deer turns its head when it hears something
rustle in the wood. A fly flies away when it sees an approaching hand. These are all
sensorimotor processes that can be described in biological terms. The spatial
localization of animals often differs greatly from that of humans.While we follow a
trail with the help of visible footprints, a dog follows the same trail with his nose.
Snakes possess an organ which is sensitive to warmth, by means of which they loca-
lise their prey. Bats transmit ultrasonic vibrations reflected by insects; the bat’s ears
localise the insect.

PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF SPATIAL LOCALISATION

ANIMALS AND PSYCHOLOGY
Is there any point in asking how it feels to be a bat?1 For practical reasons we must
answer this question in the negative. It is almost impossible to enter into the inner
world of another human being, let alone of a bat. The question is, whether such a
query is theoretically justified: has a bat an inner world of feelings or not? There
1
Nagel, 1974.

14 Seeing Space
are two extreme opinions on this question, both associated with illustrious names.
Descartes considered animals to be ‘automatons’ without feelings. He only allowed
feelings and thought to human beings. A pregnant dog was kicked out of the room
by Malebranche, a younger follower of Descartes2.When the animal began to yelp
pitifully, he said to his guests: ‘it’s only a machine.’
Leibnitz, who was opposed to Descartes’ materialism, thought that even the
humblest animals had a soul and petites perceptions. Most modern people take a
middle course. If a cat screams when someone steps on his tail, that is thought to
be an expression of pain, and when he butts you with his head, that is taken to be
an expression of affection. But the expressive movements of a fly? If they exist, we
cannot recognize them.Which doesn’t mean to say that flies are‘machines,’ but only
that we allow animals an inner life on the grounds of recognizable behaviour.

PSYCHOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE HUMAN BEING

For human beings it is possible to give, in addition to a biological description of spa-
tial behaviour, a psychological description.The space we experience exists thanks to
our senses. Phenomenal, perceptual space is a mental space with the perceiving self
in the centre, a space that exists in our consciousness and is therefore the domain of
psychology. Motor action also takes place in the phenomenal space.The self directs
its eyes towards an object, turns its head, grasps with its hands. These movements
often have a quality that does not appear in biological descriptions: they are purpo-
seful, intentional.
But the world that is perceptible through the senses does not only belong to our
private internal domain; we see a cyclist riding on the other side of the street and we
don’t think for a moment that the cyclist is only part of our internal life. The world
we experience with our senses is subjectively conditioned, but not subjective. Never-
theless, it is good to realize that we see the cyclist in our personal (although
‘re-objectivated’), mentally constructed
and coloured
world, not just as a scien-
tific object, localized in the coordinates of physical space, reflecting light rays of a
given wavelength.
Perceptual space is thus built on two foundations: objective space on the one
hand and the mental perception and action of the observer on the other.The mental
component consists of heterogeneous information, deriving from our eyes and ears,
our organs of equilibrium and of touch, and our motor receptors. All these data
from the senses are not automatically correlated with each other. If we look at a rail-
way line we see the rails in the distance getting steadily closer to each other, but if we
feel the distance between the rails with our arms it appears that it is the same every-
where. This is just one example, but there are innumerable situations in which the
spatial particulars supplied by the various senses are not in agreement.

REAL SPACE AS PROOF STATION FOR PHENOMENAL SPACE

The objective space described in Chapter 1, is the space of physics. It is also the real
space which forms the indispensable proof station in which all sensory information

2
van Hoorn, 1972.

Perceptual Space 15
Fig. 2.1. An optical illusion: the vertical lines appear to be bent, but they are straight.

is assessed and checked as to its verity. The mensuration of physical space gives the
final answer, as in the optical illusion in Figure 2.1, where the ruler proves that the
left and right vertical lines are not curved, although our visual perception makes us
believe that they are.

THE PLACE OF BIOLOGYAND PSYCHOLOGY IN

A PLURALISTIC WORLD
The biological and the psychological approaches are complementary.We have, as
already stated, absolutely no reason to deny animals a psyche, but, for the analysis
of their sensations and intentions, we have to rely on the objective study of their
behaviour.With human beings, we can enquire into the content of their spatial sen-
sations and intentions. These are sometimes so subtle that they cannot be recog-
nized in the spatial behaviour of the subject but, on the other hand, a lot of spatial
information does not penetrate into consciousness, so that objective study of spatial
behaviour has a function in humans also.
There is unmistakably a pluralistic hierarchy3 in our real world: the basis is
matter, which is the subject of physics. Above matter comes life, which has different
laws from ‘dead’ matter. Nevertheless, the material, world is the foundation of life.
Biologists occupy themselves with life. Above life comes the mind, the domain of
psychologists. With the arrival of the mental, the subjective, something quite new
appears on the world stage, with quite different laws from those of life. The laws of
the mind still have their foundation in the laws of biology, but not all laws which

3
Hartmann, 1947.

16 Seeing Space
apply to the material and the biological world are still applicable to the mental
domain. Thus feelings are not susceptible to the exact measurements that exist in
the area of physics. Furthermore, the mind
although dependent on the existence
of the individual
can transcend his material and biological limits. I have already
stated that subjective visual space is a mental space. The same is true for subjective
acoustic space.The fourth element in the structure of our real world is culture. Cul-
ture is founded on the individual minds, but obeys its own laws. It is striking that the
most typical feature of the individual mind, the subjectivity, has been lost in the
culture.
Many attempts to simplify the plurality of this image of the world have been
made. A first step is ‘dualism,’ the sharp distinction between matter and soul
which goes back to René Descartes. In this theory the independent existence of life
is thrown overboard and culture is degraded to psychologism. A still further simpli-
fication is ‘monism,’ the reduction of existence to one domain. Berkeley was the
representative of psychic monism. The present triumphal march of the natural
sciences has caused materialistic monism to have the most adherents.
In this study on spatial vision the cultural element is not taken into considera-
tion. But the relationship between biology and psychology will continually demand
our attention. As biology is ontologically more fundamental than psychology, the
biological approach to the special senses has in theory precedence. But psychology
produces such a wealth of subjective information that it has an important place in
this book.

THE AREA BETWEEN PERCEPTION AND ACTION

Between the perception of phenomenal space and possible resulting action (both
subjects of psychological investigation) there is a broad area which is not available
to psychology, but on physical examination reveals a large number of important
facts. This is the domain of anatomy and physiology. These sciences begin with
the structure and function of the receptor organs and end with the structure and
function of the effector systems (the eye muscles, mechanism of hand and foot
movements, etc.). The largest place in objective sensory science is occupied by neu-
rophysiology, a discipline which has recently produced remarkable insights but
which is still in its infancy.

Perceptual Space 17
 3. Non-Visual Spatial Perception

INTRODUCTION
THE ORGAN OF EQUILIBRIUM
The organs of equilibrium (labyrinth, vestibule), situated in mammals in the pet-
rous bone, are extremely important for non-visual spatial perception.The labyrinth
is a double organ, in the first place consisting of the utriculus and the sacculus.
These contain lumps of calcium carbonate, the so-called otoliths, which by their
weight can exert pressure on receptor cells. The organs register the direction of
gravity and other linear accelerations. In the second place, the three semicircular
canals, which are at right angles to each other (Fig. 3.1) and are filled with fluid,
the endolymph.When the head is turned a flow originates in the endolymph, giving
rise to stimulation of the receptors in the dilated end of each canal, the so-called
ampulla. In this way the canals register the turning of the head in the three

Fig. 3.1. Diagram of the position of the semicircular canals and their ampullae in the skull
(Cogan, 1948).

19
dimensions of objective space. In the central nervous system the nerve fibres arising
from the labyrinth enter the vestibular nuclei, which are closely connected with the
centres from which movements are controlled: the motor centres in the spinal cord,
the cerebrum and the cerebellum.There is a particularly close relationship between
the organ of equilibrium and the motor centres for eye movements.This will be con-
sidered in Chapter 5.

KINAESTHESIS AND TOUCH

The non-visual perception of movement and of the direction of gravity is called
‘proprioception.’ Not only the labyrinths are responsible for this sense, but also
the ‘kinaesthetic’ mechanoreceptors in the skin, muscles and joints.When an aero-
plane accelerates for the take-off, we feel the pressure of the seat against our backs.
When we slip we feel changes in the tension and position ofour bodies, resulting in a
movement which restores our balance.
Touch, in the wider conception of kinaesthesia, is, after vision, the most import-
ant aid to the exploration of space. A touch sensation does not only arise from
stimulation of pressure-sensitive receptors in the skin. Information from position-
sensitive receptors in the joints and tension-sensitive receptors in the muscles are
also indispensable for good tactile perception.
The space which we perceive with the senses of touch (and balance) has much in
common with objective space, although it is naturally very restricted. There are
three equal dimensions at right angles to each other: the vertical, lateral and
antero-posterior co-ordinates. In view of the biological importance of gravity and
the bilateral symmetry of our bodies, these are the most natural co-ordinates.

TOUCH AND VISION IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE1

In anticipation of the following chapters, we may already say that visual space
corresponds much less well with objective space than tactile space. The depth
co-ordinate in visual space has a distinctive characteristic: parallel lines appear to
converge at a distance and circles may resemble ellipses. Spatial vision is clearly
more susceptible to illusions than touch. Since time immemorial it has been known
that the eyes can easily be deceived. If you want to be sure if a long-lost friend is
suddenly standing in front ofyou in the flesh, you only have to stretch out your arms:
touch is the guarantee for reality!
No one can deny that the visual experience of space is infinitely richer than the
tactile experience. But it is still possible that the visual experience is too uncertain
and deceptive to be adequate without touch. This is the main problem which con-
fronted sensory psychology in its early days (Fig. 3.2). The discussion received a
strong impulse when William Molyneux, a leading Irish lawyer, politician and
practitioner of optics, asked Locke a famous question: ‘Suppose a man born blind,
and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a cube and a sphere.
Suppose then the blind man to be made to see: quaere, whether by his sight, before he
touched them, he could now distinguish and tell which is the globe, which the cube?’

1
Pastore, 1971; Degenaar, 1996.

20 Seeing Space
Fig. 3.2. Touch and vision. From Jamnizer, Perspectiva corporum regularium (1568).

To which the acute and judicious proposer answers:‘Not. For though he has obtained
the experience of how a globe, how a cube affects his touch, yet he has not yet obtained
the experience that what affects his touch so or so must affect his sight so or so.’ Locke
continues: ‘I agree with this thinking gentleman, whom I am proud to call my friend.’
Locke, already mentioned in connection with primary and secondary qualities,
was also the philosopher of empirism, the theory that all knowledge arises from
experience and that inborn knowledge does not exist. It is understandable that the
empirist Locke agrees with Molyneux: the visual impressions of the sphere and
the cube fall on a tabula rasa, a blank tablet. Before the cube and the sphere can be
recognized and named, an association must be made by experience between
the tactile and the visual impressions. There are no ‘innate ideas’ which equate the
terminologies of touch and vision.
Thirty years later Molyneux’s empiristic ideas seemed to be confirmed. In 1728
the famous ophthalmologist William Cheselden wrote in the PhilosophicalTrans-
actions: An Accountofsome Observations made by a young Gentleman, who was born
blind, or lost his Sight so early, that he had no Remembrance of ever having seen, and
was couch’d between13 and 14 Years of Age. The result of the cataract stab seemed at
first to be disappointing: ‘When he first saw, he was so far from making any Judge-
ments about Distances, that he thought all Objects whatever touch’d his Eyes (as he
express’d it) as what he felt, did his skin. He knew not the Shape of anything, nor any
oneThing from another, howeverdifferent in Shape, or in Magnitude: buton being told

Non-Visual Spatial Perception 21

what Things were, whose Form he before knew from feeling, he would carefully observe,
that he might know them again.’ Later he began to discover shapes, also in pictures,
but he was amazed to find that painted shapes felt flat. Apparently he derived
experiences of depth from tactile memories and not from the visual image itself.
But all’s well that ends well:‘A Year after first seeing, being carried on Epsom Downs,
and observing a large Prospect, he was exceedingly delighted with it, and call’d it a new
Kind of Seeing.’
The empirists considered this case history to be decisive proof of their own the-
ory.Voltaire described the case in his much read Ele´mens de la philosophie deNewton
(1738) and the encyclopedist Diderot gave an extensive analysis of Cheselden’s
report in his Lettre surles aveugles, a¤ l’usage de ceux qui voient (1751). Another ency-
clopedist, the naturalist Buffon (1707^1788), was also convinced of the precedence
of tactile sensations over our experience of space. He called the sense of touch the
‘sens géométrique.’ From the point ofview of physics, that was an attractive idea. It is
not surprising that geometry uses measures associated with touch, such as foot and
ell. In comparison, the visual world is geometrically very primitive and, in Buffon’s
view, only two-dimensional! Vision can learn a lot from touch. In Buffon’s own
words: ‘Before touch teaches children the true position of things and their own
bodies, they see everything upside down. A second defect in their vision at this
stage is that they see things double, because each eye forms its own image. Only
the experience of touch can correct this fault, and it does this so well that we finally
believe that we see things single and right side up. We ascribe this impression to
vision, but in fact it derives from touch.’

NATIVISM AND EMPIRISM

Viewed from the perspective of our present knowledge, no proof at all can be based
on a case like Cheselden’s. The renowned patient (and every similar one in later
centuries) had missed the chance, because of his lengthy spell of blindness, to learn
to see at the right time and therefore needed much time to catch up on his visual
retardation. This is merely a medico-physiological question, with no possible con-
sequences for the epistemology. I shall return to this in more detail in the chapter on
squint.
In the meantime the pendulum which had swung too far to the side of empirism
had begun to return to the centre. Kant reinstated the a priori and declared that the
intuition of space preceded every other experience. A sharp blow was dealt to
empirism when Wheatstone discovered the stereoscopic perception of depth in
1838. This robbed the empiricists of their principal argument: that in-depth vision
was dependent on the sense of touch. Other scientific observations were also
brought into alignment against empirism. For instance, examination of babies
showed that indications of spatial vision were present before significant tactile
experience had been gained. These observations refuted empirism and supported
the opposite point of view,‘nativism.’
The controversy between empirists and nativists continued for a long time in the
field of the special senses, as a grim battle between rival sects. The German
physiologist Hering (1834^1894) was a convinced nativist, on the grounds of his

22 Seeing Space
study of binocular vision. Helmholtz (1821^1894), who worked largely in the same
field, remained an empiricist.The last chapter of his famous Handbook is a plea for
the concept that spatial vision is dependent on experience and associations.
Now we no longer need to take sides in this struggle which lasted well into the
twentieth century. The chapter on squint and amblyopia will make it clear that
inborn ability and experience go hand in hand.The sense of sight has much to learn
in the course of the development of the young organism, but in this process it is
dominant and an autodidact, and does not need the sense of touch as teacher.
Man is an optical animal. The optic nerves contain more nerve fibres than those
reaching the cerebral cortex from all other sensory systems together.The visual sys-
tem also occupies more space in the cerebral cortex than any other sensory system.
We can therefore have an easy conscience when we direct our attention in Part II
of this book to the study of spatial vision, as a separate entity, without initially con-
sidering its relationship with the sense of touch.

Non-Visual Spatial Perception 23

Part II: The Visual Perception of Space
 4. Some Basic Facts about
the Visual System

THE EYE AND THE OCULAR MUSCLES

THE OPTICS OF THE EYE
A horizontal section through the eyeball is shown in Figure 4.1. Few of the details
need to be considered in this book.The eye is an optical system with two lenses.The
front of the cornea is the surface with the greatest refractive power. The lens itself
has less refractive power, but this is variable because the thickness of the lens can
change. Parallel rays falling straight into the eye are focussed onto the centre of the
fovea, the centre of the retina.When the lens is made thicker (accommodation, Fig.
4.2), a sharp image of near objects is obtained.With age the ability to accommodate

Iris

Cornea
Fovea

Lens
Visual axis

Optic
nerve
Retina

Fig. 4.1. Cross-sectional diagram of the human eye (Cornsweet, 1970).

27
 F N

s
s
a
a

b a
b
b
a
b

Fig. 4.2. Accommodation. Contraction of a circular muscle round the lens makes the lens
thicker (Helmholtz, 1866).

Fig. 4.3. Presbyopia (Van Dalen & Van Rens, 1981).

decreases (presbyopia), so that a sharp image of a near object is only possible with
the help of reading glasses (Fig. 4.3).

THE EYE MUSCLES AND EYE MOVEMENTS

Each eye has six external eye muscles, four straight and two oblique (Fig. 4.4). The
inner and outer muscles turn the eye round a vertical axis. The other muscles all
turn the eye in both a vertical, a horizontal and a torsional direction. This compli-
cated situation need not worry us (unless one of the muscles becomes paralysed). In
normal life the muscles work together in such a way that two sorts of movements are
possible: simple horizontal and vertical movements (and combinations of these)
and pure torsional movements (round the antero-posterior ‘sagittal’axis).
The control of these eye movements takes place in the brain stem and the
cerebellum. The machinery is there which, in numerous nuclei and nerve fibre

28 Seeing Space
Fig. 4.4. Origins and insertions of the extraocular muscles (Cogan, 1948).

connections, is responsible for the simultaneous rapid jerks and slower following
movements of the two eyes, and also for the slow movements in opposite directions.
Much is known about the subcortical structures and their functions.The details are
beyond the scope of this book, but a few principles will be considered in the follow-
ing chapters.
Some knowledge of the nomenclature of the eye movements is necessary for the
reader of this book. I shall restrict myself to the horizontal and torsional move-
ments.When only one eye is being considered, one speaks of ductions. Movements
of the two eyes in the same direction (conjugated movements) are called versions,
movements in opposite directions (disjunctive movements) are vergences. Thus,
apart from vertical movements, we speak of:
1. Adduction (inwards), abduction (outwards); incycloduction, excycloduction
(upper pole of the cornea moves inwards/outwards);
2. Dextroversion, sinistroversion; dextrocycloversion, sinistrocycloversion;
3. Convergence, divergence; incyclovergence, excyclovergence.

THE RETINA
From Greek antiquity to the Renaissance people always thought that the organ of
vision was the lens. The retina was known to exist as a thin membrane in which (on
account of the course of the blood vessels) a fishing-net could be seen, but there was
no reason to pay further attention to it.
Interest was awakened when the Basle anatomist Felix Platter (1536^1614) was
persuaded that the lens was an optic element of the eye and localised the light sens-
ibility at the back of the eye.The same idea had also been entertained byVesalius. He
thought that the place where the optic nerve leaves the eye was the light-sensitive
spot. But Platter went further. He called the retina the ‘retiform nerve’and declared
that this was the light-sensitive structure. He saw the lens as a sort of internal

Some Basic Facts about theVisual System 29

spectacle glass through which the eye looked at the outside world. He did not under-
stand the passage of light rays in the eye, but the idea that the retina consisted of
light-sensitive nervous tissue was new and extremely important.
Johannes Kepler (1571^1630) was the first to understand the path of light rays
in the eye. In about 1600 he discovered that the image of the outside world was
projected upside down on the retina. People would not believe this at first, but by
dissecting the back of a cow’s eye down to the transparent retina, people were able
to see the inverted image with their own eyes. Descartes made a nice illustration of
this experiment (Fig. 4.5).

Fig. 4.5. The inverted image made visible. The posterior layers of the eye have been partly
removed (Descartes, Dioptrique, [1637]).

30 Seeing Space
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or of their ministers—congresses in fact—should take place, to
consult concerning the great and common interests of the allies, and
the measures that might be considered necessary at the time to
promote the welfare and peace of the nations and of Europe.
It was this treaty which founded and introduced the Congress
policy of the next decade, and it is well to note that France although
a member of the Holy Alliance was excluded from this league, as
was to be expected, and that England which had remained outside
the Holy Alliance, here stood at the head of affairs. The true position
and significance of things are thereby made clear.j

FOOTNOTES

[55] [For the terms of the treaty, see volume XII.]

[56] Gazing from the Kremlin on Moscow in flames, Napoleon
said, “This forebodes the greatest calamity for us.” Journal du
Maréchal Castellane, Paris, 1895.
[57] From the Russian State Archives.
[58] The letter written by Emperor Alexander on the 18th of
March, 1816, to Count Sieven, Ambassador in London, upon the
occasion of the publication of the treaty of the Holy Alliance and
preserved in the Russian State Archives, affords a clear instance
of the direction of politics at that time.

[59] [Skrinel says, however: “For nearly half a century the Holy
Alliance was the keystone of the edifice erected at Vienna, the
hidden chain which linked Russia with the other military powers.”]
 CHAPTER X. ALEXANDER I, MYSTIC AND
HUMANITARIAN
Heaven grant that we may one day attain our aim of making Russia free and of
preserving her from despotism and tyranny. This is my unique desire, and I
willingly sacrifice all my labours and my life to the aim that is so dear to me.—
Alexander I.

THE COMPLEX CHARACTER OF ALEXANDER I

In the preceding chapter, we followed the

[1801-1825 a.d.] history of the external affairs of Russia during
fourteen years of the reign of Alexander I. Now
we shall witness the incidents of that monarch’s later years, and, in
particular, shall consider the internal condition of Russia during the
reign of one of the most interesting of sovereigns. Clearly to
appreciate the complex character of the reigns, we may follow
Shilder, partly by way of recapitulation, in dividing it into three
periods, each of which seems to represent a phase of the mental
evolution of Alexander.a
The first period embraces the time between the years 1801 and
1810, and is usually designated as the epoch of reforms, but as we
penetrate more deeply into the spirit of that period, we come to the
conclusion that it might more justly be termed the epoch of
vacillations. Actually, at this time, that is from 1801 to 1810,
ceaseless vacillations took place in the governmental life of Russia,
both in regard to the outward as well as the inward policy of the
empire; throughout every branch of the administration of the state an
entire instability of views and brusque changes from one political
system to another were to be observed. All these manifestations
were conditional exclusively on the personality of the emperor
Alexander, who possessed the characteristic of not unfrequently
vacillating at short intervals between two entirely opposed frames of
mind, without reference to the direction he had elected to follow.
The second period is continued from 1810 to 1816 and in its inner
signification is entirely concentrated in the struggle with France. This
period in contrast to the preceding, is distinguished by the pursuit of
one ruling idea, carried out with remarkable consecutiveness to the
end, an instance which is almost unique in the whole reign of
Alexander. Unexpectedly to all, to the astonishment of the whole
world, in 1812, he showed himself immovable and decided to be or
not to be. Meanwhile Napoleon, preparing himself for the invasion of
Russia, had based his political and military calculations upon the
imaginary weakness of Alexander’s character, and in this respect the
conqueror’s hidden thoughts corresponded with the secret
calculations of his allies, Metternich and Hardenburg. All these three
enemies of Russia were however destined to experience complete
disenchantment. The ruling idea of Alexander, which he then
steadfastly followed, consisted in the overthrow of Napoleon. [These
two periods we have covered in the preceding chapter, but we shall
have occasion to revert to certain phases and incidents of their
development.]
The third period, beginning from the year 1816, finishes with the
death of the emperor Alexander in 1825. Historians usually call it the
period of congresses and of the preservation of order in Europe
established by them. It would be more exact and nearer to the truth
to call this last decade the period of reaction.
 After the overthrow of Napoleon the emperor Alexander appears
as a weary martyr, wavering between the growing influence of
Araktcheiev and his own personal convictions which he had adopted
in the days of his youth. Amongst the reactionary measures which
commenced in 1816 there can still be traced bright gleams of the
enthusiasms and dreams of his youth. The speech pronounced in
1818 by the emperor at the opening of the Polish diet testifies to this.
But from the year 1820 a complete vanishing of all the previous
ideals to the realisation of which he had once aspired with sincere
enthusiasm, is to be observed. To this moral condition was also
united an incurable weariness of life, the signs of which had already
been observed in the emperor Alexander by Metternich at the
congress of Verona in 1822.
As we enter upon a closer analysis of the three periods into which
we have divided this reign, we remark another curious feature in the
development of Alexander. Metternich calls this phenomenon that of
the periodic evolutions of the emperor’s mind (les évolutions
périodiques de son esprit). The phenomenon was repeated with
striking regularity about every five years of his reign. Assimilating to
himself any idea with which he was inspired, Alexander gave himself
up to it, unhesitatingly and with full enthusiasm. The incubation
required about two years, during which the idea acquired for him the
importance of a system; the third year he remained faithful to the
system chosen, he became more and more attached to it, he
listened with real enthusiasm to its upholders and at such a time was
inaccessible to any influence that might shake the justness of the
views he had adopted. The fourth year he grew disturbed at the
consequences which might possibly arise; the fifth year there
became observable a medley of the old and vanishing system with
some new idea which was beginning to take birth in his mind. This
idea was usually diametrically opposed to the one that had left his
horizon. After that, when he had assimilated the new convictions, he
did not preserve any remembrance of the ideas he had abandoned,
beyond the obligations which bound him to the various
representatives of the former views.b
 MINISTERIAL INFLUENCES; SPERANSKI AND ARAKTCHEIEV

From 1806 to 1812 the preponderating

[1801-1815 a.d.] influence over Alexander I was that of
Speranski. Son of a village priest, educated in a
seminary, and afterwards professor of mathematics and philosophy
in the seminary of Alexander Nevski, Speranski became preceptor to
the children of Alexis Kurakin, thanks to whom he quitted the
ecclesiastical for a civil career, and became secretary to
Trochtchinski, who was then chancellor of the imperial council. Later,
after he had become director of the department of the interior under
Prince Kotchubei, Speranski rose to the position of secretary of state
and gained the complete confidence of the emperor. The favourites
of the preceding period had all been imbued with English ideas;
Speranski, on the contrary, loved France and manifested a particular
admiration for Napoleon. These French sympathies, shared at the
time by Alexander I, formed a new bond between the prince and the
minister which was not severed until the rupture with Napoleon. “We
know,” said Monsieur Bogdanovitch, “Alexander’s fondness for
representative forms and a constitutional government, but this taste
resembles that of a dilettante who goes into ecstacies over a fine
painting. Alexander early convinced himself that neither Russia’s
vast extent nor the constitution of civil society would permit the
realisation of his dream. From day to day he deferred the execution
of his utopian ideas, but delighted to discourse with his intimates
upon the projected constitution and the disadvantages of absolutism.
To please the emperor, Speranski ardently defended the principles of
liberty, and by so doing exposed himself to accusations of anarchy
and of having conceived projects dangerous to institutions that had
received the consecration of time and custom.” Painstaking, learned,
and profoundly patriotic and humane, he was the man best able to
realise all that was practicable in the ideas of Alexander.
Speranski presented to the sovereign a systematic plan of reform.
The imperial council received an extension of privileges. Composed
as it was of the chief dignitaries of the state, it became in a measure
the legislative power, and had the duty of examining new laws,
extraordinary measures, and ministerial reports; it was in reality a
sketch of a representative government. After the interview at Erfurt,
during which Napoleon had showed him marked attention, Speranski
entered into relations with the French legal writers, Locré, Legras,
Dupont de Nemours, and made them correspondents of the
legislative commission of the imperial council. The Code Napoleon
was not adapted to any but a homogeneous nation emancipated
from personal and feudal servitude, with a population whose
members all enjoyed a certain equality before the law. Thus to
Speranski the emancipation of the serfs was the corner-stone of
regeneration. He dreamed of instituting a third estate, of limiting the
number of privileged classes, and of forming the great aristocratic
families into a peerage similar to that of England. He encouraged
Count Stroinovski to publish his pamphlet, Rules to be Observed
between Proprietors and Serfs. As early as 1809 he had decided
that the holders of university degrees should have the advantage
over all others in attaining the degrees of the tchin. Thus a doctor
would at once enter the eighth rank, a master of arts the ninth, a
candidate the tenth, and a bachelor the twelfth.
Like Turgot, the minister of Louis XVIII, and the Prussian reformer,
Stein, Speranski had aroused the hostility of everyone. The nobility
of court and ante-chamber, and all the young officials who wished to
rise by favour alone were exasperated by the ukase of 1809;
proprietors were alarmed at Speranski’s project for the emancipation
of the serfs; the senators were irritated by his plans for
reorganisation which would reduce the first governing body of the
empire to the position of a supreme court of justice; and the high
aristocracy was incensed at the boldness of a man of low condition,
the son of a village priest. The people themselves complained at the
increase in taxation, all those whose interests had been set aside
united against the upstart; he was accused of despising the time-
honoured institutions of Moscow and of having presented as a model
to the Russians the Code Napoleon when the country was on the
eve of war with France. The ministers Balachev, Armfelt, Guriev,
Count Rostoptchin, Araktcheiev, and the grand duchess Catherine
Pavlovna, sister of the emperor, influenced Alexander against him.
Karamzin, the historian, addressed to the emperor an impassioned
memoir on New and Old Russia, in which he stepped forth as the
champion of serfdom, of the old laws, and of autocracy. Speranski’s
enemy even went to the length of denouncing him as a traitor and an
accomplice of France. In March, 1812, he was suddenly sent from
the capital to Nijni-Novgorod and afterwards deported to a distant
post where he was subjected to close surveillance. He was recalled
in 1819, when passions had somewhat cooled, and was appointed
governor of Siberia. In 1821 he returned to St. Petersburg, but did
not recover his former position.
A new epoch now set in. The adversaries of Speranski, Armfelt,
Schichkov, and Rostoptchin attained high positions, but the
acknowledged favourite was Araktcheiev, the rough “corporal of
Gachina,” born enemy to progress and reform and apostle of
absolute dominion and passive obedience. He gained the confidence
of Alexander, first by his devotion to the memory of Paul, next by his
punctuality, his unquestioning obedience, his disinterestedness and
habits of industry, and lastly by his ingenuous admiration for the
“genius of the emperor.” He was the most trustworthy of servitors,
the most imperious of superiors, and the most perfect instrument for
a reaction. His influence was not at once exclusive. After having
conquered Napoleon, Alexander looked upon himself as the liberator
of nations. He had set Germany free; he dealt leniently with France
and obtained for it a charter; he granted a constitution to Poland,
with the intention of extending its benefit to Russia. Though the
censorship of the press had recently forbidden the Viestnik
slovesnosti to criticise, “the servants of his majesty,” Alexander had
not entirely renounced his utopian ideas. English Protestant
influence succeeded to the influence of France; French theatres
were closed and Bible societies opened.
Nevertheless, this first period of favour for Araktcheiev soon
became an epoch of sterility; though reaction had not yet set in there
had at least come a decided pause. The reforms interrupted by the
war of 1812 were not to be again resumed. The code of Speranski
had come to an end and all efforts to compile one better suited to
Russian traditions were of no avail.f

É
 EDUCATIONAL ADVANCES; THE LYCÉE AND THE LIBRARY

On the 23rd of January of the year 1811 was promulgated the

statute of the lycée of Tsarskoi Selo, which had been definitely
worked out by secretary of state Speranski. The aim of the
establishment of the lycée was the education of young men, and
chiefly of those who were destined to fill the most important posts of
the government service. The following circumstance was the primary
cause of the foundation of this higher educational establishment:
although the emperor did not interfere in the matter of the education
of his younger brothers, the grand dukes Nicholas and Michael
Pavlovitch, which was entirely left to the empress, Marie
Feodorovna, a case soon presented itself where the emperor
recognised the necessity of departing from the rule he had
established. The widowed empress desired to send her sons to the
university of Leipsic for the completion of their studies; this was,
however, firmly opposed by the emperor, and instead he had the
idea of establishing a lycée at Tsarskoi Selo, where his younger
brothers could assist at the public lectures. A wing of the palace
connected by a gallery with the chief building, was adapted to this
purpose, and the solemn opening of the Tsarskoi Selo lycée took
place on the 31st of October, 1811, in the presence of the emperor
Alexander. It commenced with a thanksgiving service in the court
chapel of Tsarskoi Selo, after which those present accompanied the
clergy who made the tour of the edifice, sprinkling it with holy water.
At the conclusion of the ecclesiastical ceremony, the imperial charter
given to the lycée was read in the hall of the building, and the
speeches began. Amongst them that of the adjunct professor
Kunitzin earned the special approbation of the emperor for the art
with which it avoided generalisations and dwelt on the beneficence
of the founder. In conclusion, Alexander inspected the premises
allotted to the students, and was present at their dinner table.
The year 1811 was also signalised by the completion of the
building of the Kazan cathedral, the first stone of which had been laid
by the emperor Alexander on the 8th of September, 1801. The
constructor of the cathedral was the Russian architect Andrew
Nikivorovitch Voroniknin. The
building committee was under
the direction of the president of
the Academy of Arts, Count
Alexander Stroganov. The
building of the cathedral took ten
years, and on the 27th of
September, 1811, on the
anniversary of the emperor’s
coronation, the solemn
consecration of the new
cathedral took place in the
presence of the emperor. Count
Stroganov was that day elevated
to the dignity of actual privy
councillor of the first rank. He
was not destined to enjoy for
long the completion of his work:
Tower of Ivan Velika, Moscow
ten days later he died.
In the very thick of the
preparations for war, and amidst such agitating political
circumstances as had been unknown till then, the emperor
Alexander continued to labour for the enlightenment of his subjects.
Notable among his acts at this time was the foundation of a public
library. Catherine II’s idea of founding in the capital a library for
general use, and of rendering it accessible to all, was only brought to
fulfilment by Alexander. A special edifice was built with this object; its
construction had been already commenced during Catherine’s reign.
By 1812 all the preliminary work in the building of this library was
completed, and on the 14th of January the emperor honoured the
newly constructed library with a visit, and examined in detail all its
curiosities. Following on this the “draft of detailed rules for the
administration of the Imperial Public Library” was ratified by his
majesty on the 7th of March.
The events of 1812, however, deferred the actual opening of the
library: soon measures had to be thought of to save its treasures.
The opening ceremony took place, therefore, two years later, in
1814, on the 14th of January, the anniversary of the day on which
the emperor Alexander made his gracious visit to the library, on the
memorable occasion of its founding.
A great many festivities took place at the Russian court upon the
occasion of the marriage of the grand duke Nicholas Pavlovitch with
the princess Charlotte of Prussia (July 13th, 1817). About the same
time (July 31st, 1817), a modest festival was celebrated at Tsarskoi
Selo—the first distribution of prizes to students of the lycée. On that
day the emperor Alexander, accompanied by Prince A. N. Galitzin,
was present in the conference hall of the institution he had founded;
he himself distributed the prizes and certificates to the pupils, and
after having announced the awards to be given to them and their
teachers he left, bidding a fatherly farewell to all. The poet Pushkin
was amongst the students who took part in the festival.

EXPULSION OF THE JESUITS FROM ST. PETERSBURG

The year 1815, which had been filled with a series of unexpected
events, terminated with an important administrative measure which
no one had foreseen. On the 18th of January, 1817, an imperial
ukase was issued ordering the immediate expulsion of all the monks
of the order of Jesuits from St. Petersburg, and at the same time
forbidding their entry into either of the two capitals. In the middle of
the night they were provided with fur cloaks, and warm boots, and
despatched in carts to the residence of their brethren at Polotsk.[60]
It was enjoined in this ukase that the Catholic church in St.
Petersburg should be “placed on the same footing that had been
established during the reign of the empress Catherine II and which
had endured up to the year 1800.” This expulsion put an end to the
pedagogical activity of the Jesuits in St. Petersburg. The words of N.
J. Turgeniev, spoken in the year 1812 and addressed to his
successor Gruber, the Berezovski Jesuit, were, in fact, realised for
the order in the most unpleasant way. He said: “This is the beginning
of the end; you will now do so much that you will be sent away.” The
government was compelled to have recourse to decisive measures
in view of cases of conversion to Catholicism amongst the orthodox
pupils of the Jesuit school in St. Petersburg; besides which the
influence of Jesuit propaganda was spreading in a remarkable way
amongst the ladies of the high society of St. Petersburg.
This measure, however, did not put a limit to the misfortunes that
descended upon the Jesuits during the reign of Alexander. A few
years later (on the 25th of March, 1820) the order was given that the
Jesuits should be expelled finally from Russia, adding that they were
not under any aspect or denomination to be allowed to return; and at
the same time the Polotsk academy was suppressed, as well as all
the schools depending on it.

LIBERATION OF THE PEASANTS OF THE BALTIC PROVINCES

(1816-1818 A.D.)

The nobility of Esthonia had in 1811

[1816-1818 a.d.] announced their desire of giving up their rights
of servitude over their peasants. In the year
1816 this intention led to the confirmation of the establishment of the
Esthonian peasants upon a new footing, according to which the
individual right of servitude was abolished. The nobility kept the land
as their property, and the relations between the peasants and the
landowners were from thenceforth based upon mutual agreement by
free will contracts conformable with rules determining essential
conditions; a period of transition was appointed for bringing in the
new order of things. After the first trial, the individual, landless
liberation of the peasants spread throughout the Baltic provinces and
in other governments—namely, in Courland in 1817 and in Livonia in
1819. The introduction of the new order of things was everywhere
accomplished without any particular difficulty.
In expressing to the Livonian nobility his satisfaction upon the
occasion of the reform effectuated, the emperor Alexander said: “I
rejoice that the Livonian nobility has justified my expectations. Your
example deserves imitation. You have acted in accordance with the
spirit of the times and have understood that liberal principles alone
can serve as a basis for the happiness of nations.” From these
words it is evident that the emperor entertained, according to
Shishkov’s expression, an unfortunate prejudice against the right of
servitude in Russia, and it appeared to many that in other parts of
the empire words would be followed by deeds.[61]
From the year 1816, the peasant question began to occupy
society. The aide-de-camp of his majesty, Kisselev, even presented a
memoir to the emperor which bore the title Of the Gradual Abolition
of Slavery in Russia. The memoir began with the words: “Civic liberty
is the foundation of national prosperity. This truth is so undoubted
that I consider it superfluous here to explain how desirable it is that
the lawful independence of which serfs and agriculturists, are
unjustly deprived, should be established for them throughout the
empire. I consider this measure the more needful now that the
progress of enlightenment and our closer contact with Europe, which
hourly increases the fermentation of minds, indicate to the
government the necessity of averting the consequences which may
follow, and whose menace it would be already difficult or impossible
to deny. The blood in which the French Revolution was steeped
bears witness to this.” In what manner the emperor Alexander
regarded the memoir presented by his aide-de-camp, and what fate
overtook this production of his pen has remained unknown.
P. D. Kisselev was not the only nobleman who recognised the
urgent necessity of the government’s occupying itself with the
peasant question. The following circumstance serves as a proof of
this: in this same year, 1816, many of the richest landowners of the
government of St. Petersburg, knowing the emperor’s moral
aspirations to better the lot of the peasant serfs, decided to turn them
into obligatory settlers upon the basis of the then existing
regulations. The act was drawn up and signed by sixty-five
landowners; it only remained to take it to be ratified by the emperor,
and for this purpose the general aide-de-camp J. V. Vasiltchikov was
chosen. Those who had taken part in the signature of the act
supposed that the emperor knew nothing of the meetings that had
taken place on the occasion and were convinced that he would
receive graciously a proposition, which was in accordance with his
manner of thinking. But the emperor Alexander was aware of the
determination of the nobles and hardly had Vasiltchikov, after
requesting permission to present himself to his majesty, begun to
speak of the matter, when Alexander, interrupting him, inquired: “To
whom, in your opinion, does the legislative power belong in Russia?”
And when Vasiltchikov replied: “Without doubt to your imperial
majesty as an autocratic emperor,” Alexander, raising his voice, said,
“Then leave it to me to promulgate such laws as I consider most
beneficial to my subjects.”
The emperor’s reply gave little hope of a favourable solution of this
important question. In the then existing state of affairs, the matter
could not avoid passing through the hands of Araktcheiev. This
indeed actually happened. In February, 1818, before the departure of
the emperor Alexander from Moscow for Warsaw to open the first
Polish diet, Count Araktcheiev announced that his majesty had
deigned to issue an edict for the liberation of landowners’ peasants
from the condition of serfdom, with the stipulation that the edict
should not in any of its measures be oppressive to the landowners,
and especially that it should not present anything of a violent
character in its accomplishment on the part of the government: but,
on the contrary, that it should be accompanied by advantages for the
landowners and awaken in them a desire to co-operate with the
government in the abolition of the conditions of serfdom in Russia,
an abolition corresponding to the spirit of the times and the progress
of education, and indispensable for the future tranquillity of the
possessors of serfs.

THE EMPEROR AND THE QUAKERS

In 1814, at the time of the emperor Alexander’s stay in London,

the famous philanthropist Quakers, De Grelle de Mobillier,[62] and
Allen, had been inspired with the idea of taking advantage of a
favourable occasion, and instilling into the minds of the allied
sovereigns the conviction that the kingdom of Christ is a kingdom of
justice and truth. With this object they first set off to visit the king of
Prussia, who received them and praised the Quakers living in his
dominions, but expressed his conviction that war is indispensable for
the attainment of peace. The emperor Alexander showed them more
sympathy; he visited a Quaker meeting and received a deputation.
The emperor assured the Quakers that he was in agreement with the
greater part of their opinions, and that although on account of his
exceptional position his mode of action must be other than theirs, yet
he was in union with them in the spiritual worship of Christ. In taking
leave of the Quakers, Alexander invited them to come to see him in
Russia and said: “I bid you farewell as a friend and brother.”
Grelle and Allen arrived in St. Petersburg in November, 1818,
during the emperor’s absence. They went to Prince A. N. Galitzin, of
whom Grelle wrote: “He is a man penetrated by a truly Christian
spirit.” Galitzin received the Quakers with an open heart and
informed them that the emperor had sent him a letter telling him of
their coming to Russia and requesting that they might be received as
his friends. After various questions upon religious matters the
Quakers, together with Prince Galitzin, gave themselves up to silent,
inward meditation, and this method, writes Grelle, “did not appear at
all unknown to the prince. Inspired by the love of Christ, we felt in
ourselves, after silent, heartfelt prayer, the beneficent moving of
grace. In taking leave of the prince, he offered us free access to all
that could interest us—to the prisons, to reformatory institutions, and
to refuges for the poor.”
Their visit to the St. Petersburg prisons deeply agitated the pious
Quakers; according to Grelle’s observations, some of them were
very dirty and overrun with vermin; the odour was unbearable and
the air contaminated to such a degree that it affected the heads and
lungs of the visitors. The Quakers also inspected a few refuges and
schools.
On a subsequent evening the emperor Alexander received the
Quakers alone. He called them his old friends, made them sit beside
him on the sofa, and called to mind with inward emotion their
interview in London in 1814, saying that it had given him the spirit of
courage and firmness amidst all the difficult circumstances in which
he was then placed. “The emperor then,” writes Grelle, “suggested to
us some questions upon religious matters, thus showing his sincere
desire to progress in the saving knowledge of truth. He further
questioned us as to what we had seen and done in Russia. We took
advantage of the opportunity to relate to him the distressing
condition of the prisons; and in particular we directed his attention to
the wretched state of the prison in Åbo, and told him about an
unfortunate man who had been kept in irons there for nineteen
years. The emperor was touched by our narrative and said, ‘This
ought not to be; it shall not occur again.’” The Quakers also informed
the emperor how deeply grieved they had been to see, upon
inspecting one of the schools, that the pupils were given books to
read that were pernicious to their morals; after which they showed
him a specimen of extracts they had made from the Holy Scriptures
for the use of schools. The emperor remained wrapped in thought for
a moment, and then turning to his companions, he observed: “You
have done precisely what I much desired. I have often thought that
schools might serve as a powerful instrument for the furtherance of
the kingdom of Christ, by leading the people to the knowledge of the
Saviour and the principles of true piety. Send me as soon as
possible all that you have succeeded in preparing.”
The conversation then touched on Daniel Villers, also a Quaker,
whom the emperor had called to St. Petersburg to drain the
marshes; Alexander said that he regarded his presence in Russia as
a blessing to the people. “It was not the draining of the marshes,”
added the emperor, “nor any other material necessity that was the
cause of my inviting some of your ‘friends’ to come here; no, I was
guided by the wish that their true piety, their probity, and other virtues
might serve as an example for my people to imitate.”
In conclusion the emperor said, “Before we separate, let us try to
spend some time in common prayer.” “We willingly consented,”
writes Grelle in regard to this matter, “feeling that the Lord with his
beneficent power was near us. Some time passed in silent, inward
contemplation; our souls were humbled, and a little later I felt within
me the heavenly breathing of the spirit of prayer and compunction;
enfolded by the spirit, I bent my knees before the greatness of God;
the emperor knelt beside me. Amidst the inward outpourings of the
soul we felt that the Lord had consented to hear our prayers. After
that we spent a little while longer in silence and then withdrew. In
bidding us farewell the emperor expressed the desire to see us
again before we left. We spent two hours with him.”
After this remarkable audience, which so graphically expresses
the religious-idealistic frame of mind of the emperor Alexander, the
Quakers visited under the patronage of the widowed empress the
female educational establishments, the young pupils of which
aroused much sympathy in them. Grelle found that some of them
had hearts open for receiving evangelical inspiration. These visits
were followed by the reception of the Quakers by the empress Marie
Feodorovna. They told the empress that they were much pleased at
the condition of the institutions under her patronage, but at the same
time they could not be otherwise than grieved to see how little
attention was paid in St. Petersburg, and in general throughout
Russia, to the education of children of the lower classes; they also
spoke to the empress of the unsatisfactoriness of the then existing
prison accommodations for women, and indicated how
advantageous it would be if the prisons were visited by women
capable of instructing and consoling the unfortunate prisoners. The
empress entirely agreed with these ideas.
Soon the emperor again invited the Quakers to come and see him.
“He again received us in his private apartments,” writes Grelle, “to
which we were taken by a secret way, avoiding the guard and the
court servants. Nobody seemed surprised to see us keeping our
heads covered. The emperor, as before, received us with sincere
affability. He began by informing us that the chains in which we had
seen the prisoners at Åbo had been taken off, that the unfortunate
man of whom we had told him had been set at liberty, and that
orders had been given that the other prisoners were to be better
treated. He then asked us to relate to him openly all that we had
noticed in the prisons during our stay in Russia. The governor-
general (Count Miloradovitch) had informed him of the changes and
improvements which he considered it advantageous to carry out in
the gaols, and the emperor entirely approved of the changes that
had already been made. He further told us that the widowed
empress had spoken to him with pleasure of our visit to her; that she
had taken to heart what we had said of the extreme neglect of the
 education of children of the poorer
classes, and that she was occupying
herself in searching for the most
effectual measures of remedying this
defect as soon as possible. The
emperor added that he had named a
certain sum of money to be used for
the establishment of six schools for
poor children in the capital, and that
the children were to receive there a
religious and moral education. He
further told us that he had attentively
perused the books we had prepared
and was delighted with them; that if
we had only come to Russia to do
this, we had already accomplished a
very important work, and that he
intended to bring our books into use
throughout all the schools of his
Russian Priest empire.”
Before their departure for Moscow
the emperor received his old friends a third time, and on this
occasion he related to them various details of how he had himself
been educated under the supervision of his grandmother, the
empress Catherine. “The persons attached to me,” said he, “had
some good qualities, but they were not believing Christians and
therefore my primary education was not united with any profound
moral impressions; in accordance with the customs of our church, I
was taught formally to repeat morning and evening certain prayers I
had learned; but this habit, which did not in any wise satisfy the
inward requirements of my religious feelings, soon wearied me.
Meanwhile it happened more than once that, when I lay down to rest,
I had a lively feeling in my soul of my sins, and of the various moral
deficiencies of my mode of life; thus penetrated by heartfelt
repentance I was moved by a desire to rise from my bed and in the
silence of the night to throw myself upon my knees and with tears
ask God for forgiveness and for strength to preserve greater
watchfulness over myself in future. This contrition of heart continued
for some time; but little by little, in the absence of moral support on
the part of the persons who surrounded me, I began to feel more
seldom and more feebly these salutary movings of grace. Sin,
together with worldly distractions, began to reign more and more
within my soul. Finally, in 1812, the Lord in his love and mercy, again
called to me, and the former movings of grace were renewed with
fresh strength in my heart. At that period a certain pious person[63]
advised me to take to reading the Holy Scriptures and gave me a
Bible, a book which until then I had never had in my hands. I
devoured the Bible finding that its words shed a new and never
previously experienced peace in my heart, and satisfied the thirst of
my soul. The Lord in his goodness granted me his Spirit to
understand what I read; and to this inward instruction and
enlightenment I owe all the spiritual good that I acquired by the
reading of the divine Word; this is why I look upon inward
enlightenment or instruction from the Holy Ghost as the firmest
support in the soul—saving knowledge of God.”
The emperor then related to his companions how deeply his soul
was penetrated with the desire to abolish forever wars and
bloodshed upon earth. “He said,” writes Grelle, “that he had passed
many nights without sleep in strained and intense deliberation as to
how this sacred desire could be realised, and in deep grief at the
thought of the innumerable calamities and misfortunes that are
occasioned by war. At that time when his soul was thus bowed down
in ardent prayer to the Saviour the idea arose in him of inviting the
crowned heads to unite in one holy alliance, before the tribunal of
which all future disagreements that should arise should be settled,
instead of having recourse to the sword and to bloodshed. This idea
took such possession of him that he got up from his bed, expounded
his feelings and aspirations in writing with such liveliness and ardour
that his intentions were subjected on the part of many to unmerited
suspicion and misinterpretation—‘Although,’ added he with a sigh,
‘ardent love for God and mankind was the sole motive that governed
me.’ Thoughts of the formation of the Holy Alliance again arose in
him during his stay in Paris. After we had spent some time in
conversing on this important subject, the emperor said to us: ‘And
thus we part, in this world, but I firmly trust that we, being separated
by space, will however remain by the goodness of the spirit of God
forever united through inward spiritual fellowship, for in the kingdom
of God there are no limitations of space. Now, before we part, I have
one request to make to you: let us join in silent prayer and see if the
Lord will not consent to manifest his gracious presence to us, as he
did the last time.’
“We gladly consented to fulfil his desire. A solemn silence followed
during which we felt that the Lord was amongst us; our souls were
reverently opened before him and he himself was working within us
through his grace. Somewhat later, I felt, through the breathing of the
love of Christ, the lively desire of saying a few words of approbation
to our beloved emperor in order to encourage him to walk with firm
steps in the Lord’s way and to put his whole trust, unto the end of his
earthly journeyings, in the efficaciousness of the divine grace; in
general I felt the necessity of guarding him from evil and
strengthening him in his good intention of ever following the path of
truth and righteousness. The words that I said produced a profound
impression upon the emperor and he shed burning tears. Then our
dear Allen, kneeling, raised a fervent prayer to God for the emperor
and his people. The emperor himself fell on his knees beside him
and remained a long while with us in spiritual outpourings before the
Lord. Finally we solemnly and touchingly took leave of each other.”

SECRET SOCIETIES UNDER ALEXANDER I

After the year 1815, when the emperor Alexander already

appeared as a weary martyr, immersed in mystic contemplation and
wavering between the evergrowing influence of Count Araktcheiev
and the convictions he had himself formed in the days of his youth,
the events of 1812 were reflected in a totally different manner upon
the movement of social ideas in Russia. The war of the fatherland
was accompanied in Russia by an unusual rising of the spirit of the
nation and a remarkable awakening of the public conscience. The
continuation of the struggle with Napoleon beyond the frontiers of
Russia had led Alexander’s troops to
Paris. This enforced military exploit
widened the horizon of the Russian
people; they became acquainted with
European manners and customs,
were in closer contact with the current
of European thought, and felt drawn
towards political judgment. It was
quite natural that the Russian people
should begin to compare the order of
things in their own country with
political and public organisation
abroad. An unrestrainable impulse to
criticise and compare was awakened;
thenceforth it was difficult to become
reconciled to the former status of
Russian life and the traditional order
of things.
It will be asked what abuses
presented themselves to the gaze of
the Russian conquerors, who had
liberated Europe, upon their return to
their country. An entire absence of
A Valdai Woman
respect for the rights of the individual
was patent; the forcible introduction of
monstrous military settlements, the
exploits of Magnitski and others of his kind in the department of
public instruction were crying shames; and, finally, the cruelties of
serfdom were in full activity. The subtile exactions which then
prevailed in service at the front completed the development of
general dissatisfaction amongst military circles. There is, therefore,
nothing astonishing in the fact that the misfortunes which then
weighed upon the Russian people should have found an answering
call in the hearts of men who were at that time in the grip of a violent
patriotic revival.
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