On Sighting and Its Rules (1)
The expert archers have long differed over how one should look at the target. Because of the nobility and centrality of this act—it is the very backbone of shooting—their views fall into three principal categories, which in turn branch into six sub-methods:
- Sighting from outside the bow.
- Sighting from inside the bow.
- Sighting alternately from both inside and outside.
They also disagreed on another point: is it better to sight with both eyes open, or with only one eye?
• The great majority of archers prefer to use both eyes, holding that this way is more complete, more perfect, and stronger.
• Others favor sighting with a single eye.
Those in the second camp argue that employing one eye concentrates the visual ray and strengthens it, whereas using both eyes scatters that ray on its way to the mark and thus weakens it.
They explain the matter as follows: when the marksman looks with a single eye, the light of both eyes converges in that one. The visual light descends from the brain to a cruciform intersection in the forehead and there divides into two channels, each passing to one eye (2). If, therefore, the observer closes one of his eyes, the current of light returns