But notwithstanding these discoveries, laboriously and painfully
made as they were, I felt horribly dissatisfied. At every step I
found myself stopped by the imperfections of my instruments. Like
all active microscopists, I gave my imagination full play. Indeed,
it is a common complaint against many such, that they supply the
defects of their instruments with the creations of their brains. I
imagined depths beyond depths in Nature which the limited power of
my lenses prohibited me from exploring. I lay awake at night
constructing imaginary microscopes of immeasurable power, with which
I seemed to pierce through all the envelopes of matter down to its
original atom. How I cursed those imperfect mediums which necessity
through ignorance compelled me to use! How I longed to discover the
secret of some perfect lens whose magnifying power should be limited
only by the resolvability of the object, and which at the same time
should be free from spherical and chromatic aberrations, in short
from all the obstacles over which the poor microscopist finds
himself continually stumbling! I felt convinced that the simple
microscope, composed of a single lens of such vast yet perfect power,
was possible of construction. To attempt to bring the compound
microscope up to such a pitch would have been commencing at the
wrong end; this latter being simply a partially successful endeavor
to remedy those very defects of the simple instrument, which, if
conquered, would leave nothing to be desired.
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