Page:Thoughts on art and life.djvu/89

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all hope of once more beholding the sun, the light of the whole world, is lost And how many are they who feel great hatred for the darkness of night, although it is brief. Oh! what would they do were they constrained to abide in this darkness during the whole of their life ? Certainly there is no one who would not rather lose his hearing or his sense of smell than his eyesight, and the loss of hearing includes the loss of all sciences which find expression in words; and this loss a man would incur solely so as not to be deprived of the sight of the beauty of the world which consists in the surfaces of bodies artificial as well as natural, which are reflected in the human eye.

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Animals suffer greater loss in losing their sight than their hearing for many reasons: firstly, because it is by means of their sight that they find . the food which is their nourishment, and is necessary for all animals; secondly, because by means of sight the beauty of created things is apprehended, especially those which lead to love, while he who is born blind cannot apprehend such beauty by hearing, because he has never received any knowledge as to what is beauty of any kind. There remains hearing, by which I mean only the human voice and speech; they contain the names of all things whatsoever. It is possible to live happily without the knowledge of these

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