Page:Thoughts on art and life.djvu/50

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36.

The sense ministers to the soul, and not the soul to the sense; and where the sense which ministers to the soul ceases to serve the soul, all the func- tions of that sense are lacking in life, as is evident in those who are born dumb and blind.

37.

and if thou sayest that sight impedes the secu- rity and subtlety of mental meditation, by rea- son of which we penetrate into divine knowledge, and that this impediment drove a philosopher to deprive himself of his sight, I answer that the eye, as lord of the senses, performs its duty in being an impediment to the confusion and lies of that which is not science but discourse, by which with much noise and gesticulation argument is con- stantly conducted; and hearing should do the same, feeling, as it does, the offence more keenly, because it seeks after harmony which devolves onall thesenses. And if this philosopher deprived himself of his sight to get rid of the obstacle to his discourses, consider that his discourses and his brain were a party to the act, because the whole was madness. Now could he not have closed his eyes when this frenzy came upon him, and have kept them closed until the frenzy consumed it- self? But the man was mad, the discourse insane, and egregious the folly of destroying his eye- sight.

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