The eye, in which the beauty of the universe is mirrored by those who contemplate it, is of such excellence that whoever consents to its loss deprives himself of the representation of all the works of nature, by the sight of which the soul remains content within the human prison, by means of the eyes, through which that soul represents to itself all the various things of nature. But whoever loses them leaves that soul in a dark prison, where all hope of seeing again the sun, light of all the world, is lost. And how many are there to whom the darkness of night is in the highest hatred, even though it be of brief duration! O, what would these do, were such darkness the companion of their life? And certainly there is no one who would not rather lose hearing and smell than the eye — the loss of which [hearing] consents to the loss of all the sciences that end in words, and one bears this loss only so as not to lose the beauty of the world, which consists in the surfaces of bodies, both accidental and natural, which reflect in the human eye.

[25] Dispute of the poet and painter, and what difference there is between poetry and painting.
The poet says that his science is invention and measure; and this is the simple body of poetry — invention of matter, and measure in the verses — and that he then clothes himself with all the sciences. To whom the painter answers that he has the same obligations in the science of painting, that is, invention and measure: invention in the matter that he must feign, and measure in the things painted, so that they be not out of proportion; but that...