Chapter 103

Sæpe, ubi sit quod ames, inter tarn multa requiras: Decipit hac oculos ægide dives Amor. “By dress we’re won; gold, gems, and rich brocades Make up the pageant that your heart invades; In all that glittering figure which you see, The far least part of her own self is she; In vain for her you love amidst such cost You search, the mistress in such dress is lost.” What a strange power do the poets attribute to the senses, that make Narcissus so desperately in love with his own shadow, Cunctaque miratur, quibus est mirabilis ipse; Se cupit imprudens, et, qui probat, ipse probatur; Dumque petit, petitur; pariterque accendit, et ardet: “Admireth all; for which to be admired; And inconsiderately himself desir’d. The praises which he gives his beauty claim’d, Who seeks is sought, th’ inflamer is inflam’d:” and Pygmalion’s judgment so troubled by the impression of the sight of his ivory statue that he loves and adores it as if it were a living woman! Oscnla dat, reddique putat: sequi turque, tenetque, Et credit tactis digitos insidere membris; Et metuit, pressos veniat ne livor in artus. “He kisses, and believes he’s kissed again; Seizes, and ‘twixt his arms his love doth strain, And thinks the polish’d ivory thus held Doth to his fingers amorous pressure yield, And has a timorous fear, lest black and blue Should in the parts with ardour press’d ensue.” Put a philosopher into a cage of small thin set bars of iron, hang him on the top of the high tower of Notre Dame at Paris; he will see, by manifest reason, that he cannot possibly fall, and yet he will find (unless he has been used to the plumber’s trade) that he cannot help but the sight of the excessive height will fright and astound him; for we have enough to do to assure ourselves in the galleries of our steeples, if they are made with open work, although they are of stone; and some there are that cannot endure so much as to think of it. Let there be a beam thrown over betwixt these two towers, of breadth sufficient to walk upon, there is no philosophical wisdom so firm that can give us the courage to walk over it as we should do upon the ground. I have often tried this upon our mountains in these parts; and though I am one who am not the most subject to be afraid, I was not able to endure to look into that infinite depth without horror and trembling, though I stood above my length from the edge of the precipice, and could not have fallen unless I would. Where I also observed that, what height soever the precipice was, provided there were some tree, or some jutting out of a rock, a little to support and divide the sight, it a little eases our fears, and gives greater assurance; as if they were things by which in falling we might have some relief; but that direct precipices we are not to look upon without being giddy; Ut despici vine vertigine timid ocvlorum animique non possit: “‘To that one cannot look without dizziness;” which is a manifest imposture of the sight. And therefore it was that that fine philosopher put out his own eyes, to free the soul from being diverted by them, and that he might philosophize at greater liberty; but, by the same rule, he should have dammed up his ears, that Theophrastus says are the most dangerous instruments about us for receiving violent impressions to alter and disturb us; and, finally, should have deprived himself of all his other senses, that is to say, of his life and being; for they have all the power to command our soul and reason: Fit etiam sope specie quâdam, sope vocum gravitate et cantibus, ut pettantur animi vehementius; sope etiam cura et timoré, “For it often falls out that the minds are more vehemently struck by some sight, by the quality and sound of the voice, or by singing; and ofttimes also by grief and fear.” Physicians hold that there are certain complexions that are agitated by the same sounds and instruments even to fury. I have seen some who could not hear a bone gnawed under the table without impatience; and there is scarce any man who is not disturbed at the sharp and shrill noise that the file makes in grating upon the iron; as also to hear chewing near them, or to hear any one speak who has an impediment in the throat or nose, will move some people even to anger and hatred. Of what use was that piping prompter of Gracchus, who softened, raised, and moved his master’s voice whilst he declaimed at Rome, if the movements and quality of the sound had not the power to move and alter the judgments of the auditory? In earnest, there is wonderful reason to keep such a clutter about the firmness of this fine piece, that suffers itself to be turned and twined by the motion and accidents of so light a wind. The same cheat that the senses put upon our understanding they have in turn put upon them; the soul also some times has its revenge; they lie and contend which should most deceive one another. What we see and hear when we are transported with passion, we neither see nor hear as it is:-- Et solem geminum, et duplices se ostendere Thebas. “Thebes seems two cities, and the sun two suns.” The object that we love appears to us more beautiful than it really is; Multimodis igitur pravas turpesque videmus Esse in deliciis, summoque in honore vigere; “Hence ‘tis that ugly things in fancied dress Seem gay, look fair to lovers’ eyes, and please;” and that we hate more ugly; to a discontented and afflicted man the light of the day seems dark and overcast. Our senses are not only depraved, but very often stupefied by the passions of the soul; how many things do we see that we do not take notice of, if the mind be occupied with other thoughts? In rebus quoque apertis noscere possis, Si non advertas animum, proinde esse quasi omni Tempore semotæ fuerint, longeque remotæ: “Nay, even in plainest things, unless the mind Take heed, unless she sets herself to find, The thing no more is seen, no more belov’d, Than if the most obscure and most remov’d:” it would appear that the soul retires within, and amuses the powers of the senses. And so both the inside and the outside of man is full of infirmity and falsehood. They who have compared our lives to a dream were, perhaps, more in the right than they were aware of. When we dream, the soul lives, works, and exercises all its faculties, neither more nor less than when awake; but more largely and obscurely, yet not so much, neither, that the difference should be as great as betwixt night and the meridian brightness of the sun, but as betwixt night and shade; there she sleeps, here she slumbers; but, whether more or less, ‘tis still dark, and Cimmerian darkness. We wake sleeping, and sleep waking. I do not see so clearly in my sleep; but as to my being awake, I never found it clear enough and free from clouds; moreover, sleep, when it is profound, sometimes rocks even dreams themselves asleep; but our waking is never so sprightly that it rightly purges and dissipates those whimsies, which are waking dreams, and worse than dreams. Our reason and soul receiving those fancies and opinions that come in dreams, and authorizing the actions of our dreams with the like approbation that they do those of the day, wherefore do we not doubt whether our thought, our action, is not another sort of dreaming, and our waking a certain kind of sleep? If the senses be our first judges, it is not ours that we are alone to consult; for, in this faculty, beasts have as great, or greater, than we; it is certain that some of them have the sense of hearing more quick than man; others that of seeing, others that of feeling, others that of touch and taste. Democritus said, that the gods and brutes had the sensitive faculties more perfect than man. But betwixt the effects of their senses and ours the difference is extreme. Our spittle cleanses and dries up our wounds; it kills the serpent:-- Tantaque in his rebas distantia differitasque est, Ut quod aliis cibus est, aliis fuat acre venenum. Sæpe etenim serpens, hominis contacta salivà, Disperit, ac sese mandendo conficit ipsa: “And in those things the difference is so great That what’s one’s poison is another’s meat; For serpents often have been seen, ‘tis said, When touch’d with human spittle, to go mad, And bite themselves to death:” what quality shall we attribute to our spittle? as it affects ourselves, or as it affects the serpent? By which of the two senses shall we prove the true essence that we seek for? Pliny says there are certain sea-hares in the Indies that are poison to us, and we to them; insomuch that, with the least touch, we kill them. Which shall be truly poison, the man or the fish? Which shall we believe, the fish of the man, or the man of the fish? One quality of the air infects a man, that does the ox no harm; some other infects the ox, but hurts not the man. Which of the two shall, in truth and nature, be the pestilent quality? To them who have the jaundice, all things seem yellow and paler than to us:-- Lurida præterea fiunt, quæcunque tuentur Arquati. “Besides, whatever jaundic’d eyes do view Looks pale as well as those, and yellow too.” They who are troubled with the disease that the physicians call hyposphagma--which is a suffusion of blood under the skin--see all things red and bloody. What do we know but that these humours, which thus alter the operations of sight, predominate in beasts, and are usual with them? for we see some whose eyes are yellow, like us who have the jaundice; and others of a bloody colour; ‘tis likely that the colours of objects seem other to them than to us. Which of the two shall make a right judgment? for it is not said that the essence of things has a relation to man only; hardness, whiteness, depth, and sharpness, have reference to the service and knowledge of animals as well as to us, and nature has equally designed them for their use. When we press down the eye, the body that we look upon we perceive to be longer and more extended;--many beasts have their eyes so pressed down; this length, therefore, is perhaps the true form of that body, and not that which our eyes give it in the usual state. If we close the lower part of the eye things appear double to us:-- Bina lucemarum fiorentia lumina flammis... Et duplices hominum faciès, et corpora bina. “One lamp seems double, and the men appear Each on two bodies double heads to bear.” If our ears be hindered, or the passage stopped with any thing, we receive the sound quite otherwise than we usually do; animals, likewise, who have either the ears hairy, or but a very little hole instead of an ear, do not, consequently, hear as we do, but receive another kind of sound. We see at festivals and theatres that, opposing a painted glass of a certain colour to the light of the flambeaux, all things in the place appear to us green, yellow, or violet:-- Et vulgo faciunt id lutea russaque vela, Et ferrugina, cum, magnis intenta theatris, Per malos vulgata trabesque, trementia pendent; Namque ibi consessum caveai subter, et omnem Scenai speciem, patrum, matrumque, deorumque Inficiunt, coguntque suo volitare colore: “Thus when pale curtains, or the deeper red, O’er all the spacious theatre are spread, Which mighty masts and sturdy pillars bear, And the loose curtains wanton in the air; Whole streams of colours from the summit flow, The rays divide them in their passage through, And stain the scenes, and men, and gods below:” ‘tis likely that the eyes of animals, which we see to be of divers colours, produce the appearance of bodies the same with their eyes. We should, therefore, to make a right judgment of the oppositions of the senses, be first agreed with beasts, and secondly amongst ourselves; which we by no means are, but enter into dispute every time that one hears, sees, or tastes something otherwise than another does, and contests, as much as upon any other thing, about the diversity of the images that the senses represent to us. A child, by the ordinary rule of nature, hears, sees, and talks otherwise than a man of thirty years old; and he than one of threescore. The senses are, in some, more obscure and dusky, and more open and quick in others. We receive things variously, according as we are, and according as they appear to us. Those rings which are cut out in the form of feathers, which are called endless feathers, no eye can discern their size, or can keep itself from the deception that on one side they enlarge, and on the other contract, and come So a point, even when the ring is being turned round the finger; yet, when you feel them, they seem all of an equal size. Now, our perception being so uncertain and so controverted, it is no more a wonder if we are told that we may declare that snow appears white to us; but that to affirm that it is in its own essence really so is more than we are able to justify; and, this foundation being shaken, all the knowledge in the world must of necessity fall to ruin. What! do our senses themselves hinder one another? A picture seems raised and embossed to the sight; in the handling it seems flat to the touch. Shall we say that musk, which delights the smell, and is offensive to the taste, is agreeable or no? There are herbs and unguents proper for one part o£ the body, that are hurtful to another; honey is pleasant to the taste, but offensive to the sight. They who, to assist their lust, used in ancient times to make use of magnifying-glasses to represent the members they were to employ bigger, by that ocular tumidity to please themselves the more; to which of their senses did they give the prize,--whether to the sight, that represented the members as large and great as they would desire, or to the feeling, which represented them little and contemptible? Are they our senses that supply the subject with these different conditions, and have the subjects themselves, nevertheless, but one? As we see in the bread we eat, it is nothing but bread, but, by being eaten, it becomes bones, blood, flesh, hair; and nails:-- Ut cibus in membra atque artus cum diditur omnes, Disperit,, atque aliam naturam sufficit ex se; “As meats, diffus’d through all the members, lose Their former state, and different things compose;” the humidity sucked up by the root of a tree becomes trunk, leaf, and fruit; and the air, being but one, is modulated, in a trumpet, to a thousand sorts of sounds; are they our senses, I would fain know, that, in like manner, form these subjects into so many divers qualities, or have they them really such in themselves?