-ght is like one who is cast out of the world, because he no longer sees it, nor any of its things; and this life is the sister of death.

[16] Which is of greater harm to the human species, to lose the eye or the ear.

Greater harm do the animals receive from the loss of sight than of hearing, for several reasons; and first, that by means of sight food is found, whence one must be nourished, which is necessary to all animals; and second, that by sight the beauty of created things is comprehended, above all of the things that induce to love, in which the man born blind cannot partake through hearing, because he never had knowledge of what the beauty of any thing might be. There remains to him hearing, by which alone he understands voices and human speech, in which are the names of all things to which a name is given: without the knowledge of these names one may well live happy, as is seen in the deaf-born, that is the mute, who delight by means of drawing, in which most of the mute take delight. And if you shall say that sight impedes the fixed and subtle mental cognition by which one penetrates the divine sciences, and that such impediment led a philosopher to deprive himself of sight — to this it is answered that such an eye, as lord of the senses, does its duty in giving impediment to the confused and lying discourses (not sciences) by which one always disputes with great clamour and waving of hands; and the same ought hearing to do, which remains the more offended, because it would wish concord, of which all...