telescope-maker's

Updated: August 3, 2026

Suffice it to note how measureless the superiority, as a mere piece of mechanism, of an average eye to the finest of telescopes, and how just, nevertheless, is the telescope-maker's claim to praise for skilful adaptation to the laws of optics, when he has succeeded in a faint and feeble imitation of some minor part of nature's visual apparatus.

William Thomas Thornton - Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics: With Some of Their Applications