Extracted text
Editorial transcription, lightly normalized from the source scan. Line-break hyphenation, spacing, capitalization, and unmistakable OCR errors have been repaired; the claims remain those of The Flaming Sword and of its correspondents.
Koreshan Optics and Cosmogony.
Editor Flaming Sword: — You say that foreshortening does not take place in space, nor on the surface of the earth and sky, but within the eye. A critic wants to know why the plate in a camera, having no visual force nor curves of vision, registers the picture as the eye sees it.
I see that the Koreshan theory of optics and the Cellular Cosmogony fit. While reasoning from analogy I can come to no other conclusion than that the Koreshan Astronomy is true, so must accept the theory of vision in harmony with it; but I would like to understand it from other reasons than analogy. Will you kindly state briefly what proofs, if any, support the Koreshan theory of optics, leaving out the authority of Koresh, his illumination, and the certainty of the concavity curvature as determined by geodetic survey? I see the importance of such demonstration, yet without such proof, and allowing Koreshan assumption to the same extent as Copernican assumption (and you have the same right), the Koreshan Astronomy still seems greatly superior to the Copernican in quality and quantity of satisfying proofs of truth reaching into every domain. — M. A. P., Antioch, O.
(1) There is nothing in matter that is not acted upon and made to yield energy. The sensitive plate of a camera acts precisely as does the sensitive plate of the vitreous chamber; namely, the retina. The camera is an artificial eye. It has not a brain behind it to receive the picture, nor can it supply its own coating of collodion, as can the eye. What the eye has by nature, the artist supplies to the camera. The plate has a force corresponding to the visual force. The visual force comes from the brain cells, but the force of the camera is in the light entering the camera and in the destruction of material and its conversion to energy on the plate.
The form of the eye, the relation of its organs, and the necessary agreement of function with form all go to show that the Koreshan theory of vision is true. In normal conditions, there can be not conflict between form and function. The rapid nerve exhaustion, in rapid change of scenery, is one of the simplest proofs that visual energy is derived from the brain cells, which derive their supply through the vascular and nervous systems. We have records of cases of exhaustion from the waste of energy through vision, and under our own observation in many instances have we seen complete nervous exhaustion through the excessive use of the eye in the rapid resupply of the visual films on the retina.
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The Flaming Sword · Vol. 15, No. 27 · 24 May 1901 · PDF p. 17