64. M. Bayle makes one more ingenious objection, which he draws from the example of the sense of sight. 'When a square tower', he says, 'from a distance appears to us round, our eyes testify very clearly not only that they perceive nothing square in this tower, but also that they discover there a round shape, incompatible with the square shape. One may therefore say that the truth which is the square shape is not only above, but even against, the witness of our feeble sight.' It must be admitted that this observation is correct, and although it be true that the appearance of roundness comes simply from the effacement of the angles, which distance causes to disappear, it is true, notwithstanding, that the round and the square are opposites. Therefore my answer to this objection is that the representation of the senses, even when they do all that in them lies, is often contrary to the truth; but it is not the same with the faculty of reasoning, when it does its duty, since a strictly reasoned argument is nothing but a linking together of truths. And as for the sense of sight in particular, it is well to consider that there are yet other false appearances which come not from the 'feebleness of our eyes' nor from the loss of visibility brought about by distance, but from the very _nature of vision_, however perfect it be. It is thus, for instance, that the circle seen sideways is changed into that kind of oval which among geometricians is known as an ellipse, and sometimes even into a parabola or a hyperbola, or actually into a straight line, witness the ring of Saturn.