Windows of the Mind

So God fastened and bound together the parts that make the body firm — the parts we call bones — knotting them and joining them to one another with sinews, so that the mind could use them like reins, whether it wanted to hurry forward or to hold back, and could control and steer the whole mass of the body with no labor and no effort at all, by the slightest inclination. But he covered the bones over with the soft inner parts, as suited each place, so that what was solid would be enclosed and hidden. Into those inner parts he also mixed veins, like streams divided through the whole body, so that the moisture and the blood, running in different directions, might water every limb with the juices of life. And he shaped those inner parts in the way that suited each kind of creature and each position, and drew skin over them — skin that he either simply made beautiful, or covered with thick hair, or fenced with scales, or adorned with bright feathers. [a]

But here is a marvel of God’s contrivance: that one arrangement, one single plan, puts on show countless varieties of animals. For in nearly everything that breathes there is the same connection and ordering of the limbs. First comes the head, and joined to it the neck; then the chest attached to the neck, the shoulders standing out from the chest, the belly holding to it; then the organs of generation set below the belly; and last of all the thighs and the feet. And it is not only the limbs that keep their own order and position in them all, but the parts of the limbs too. In the head alone the ears have their fixed place, the eyes their fixed place, and so do the nostrils, and the mouth, and in the mouth the teeth and the tongue. Yet though all these things are the same in every animal, the creatures formed from them differ endlessly and in a thousand ways, because the parts I have named are drawn out longer in one and pulled in shorter in another, and so are taken in by outlines that vary in every direction.

And is this not divine — that in so great a crowd of living creatures each animal is at its best in its own class and kind? So much so that if any part were carried over from one to another, the result would have to be that nothing could be more awkward to use and nothing uglier to look at. Give an elephant a long neck, or a camel a short one. Fasten feet or hair on snakes, which need nothing of the sort, since a body stretched out evenly at full length is enough for them — nothing except to be marked with spots along the back, to hold themselves up on their smooth scales, and to glide by winding paths into slippery places.

But in four-footed animals the same designer stretched the line of the spine further, drawing it out beyond the body from the top of the head and bringing it to a point in a tail, so that the parts of the body that give offense might either be covered because they are unsightly or protected because they are tender, and so that the tail’s motion might drive certain tiny and troublesome creatures off the body. Take that member away and the animal would be incomplete and helpless. But where there is reason and a hand, a tail is not as necessary as a covering of hair. Everything is arranged so fittingly, each in its own class, that nothing more unbecoming can be imagined than a four-footed animal with no hair, or a man with a coat of it.

And yet, though man’s own bareness works wonderfully toward beauty, it did not suit his head; how great a disfigurement that would be is plain from baldness. So God clothed the head with hair, and since the hair was going to be on top, he added it as a kind of ornament to the highest point of the building. This ornament is not gathered into a circle or rounded off like a cap, which would look wrong by leaving some parts bare. It is poured out freely in some places and drawn back in others, according to what suits each place. So the forehead trenched around by its border, the hair pushed forward from the temples in front of the ears, the tops of the ears ringed about as if by a crown, and the whole back of the head covered — all of it makes an appearance of wonderful fitness. And the beard, by its very nature, does an incredible amount to mark out that a body has come to maturity, or to tell the sexes apart, or to give the beauty of manliness and strength. Plainly the plan of the whole work would not have hung together if anything had been made other than it is.

Now I will set out the plan of the whole man, and explain the uses and habits of the several parts, whether they are exposed to view on the body or hidden inside it. When God had determined that of all the animals man alone should be heavenly and all the rest earthly, he raised him upright to contemplate the sky, and made him two-footed — plainly so that he might look toward the same quarter he came from. The others he pressed down toward the earth so that, having no expectation of immortality, thrown down with their whole bodies to the ground, they might be slaves to their appetite and their food. And so it is man’s upright reason and lifted posture alone, and his face, which he shares with God his Father and which closely resembles his, that declare where he came from and who made him. [d]

His mind, all but divine, since it has been given rule not only over the animals on the earth but over his own body as well, is set in the highest part, the head, as in a lofty citadel, and from there looks out and observes everything. God built this palace for it, not drawn out and stretched forward as in the mute animals, but like an orb and a globe, because everything round belongs to a perfect plan and figure. So the mind, that divine fire, is covered by the head as by a vault; and when he had covered the top of the vault with a natural garment, he furnished and adorned the front part, which is called the face, with the services its members had to perform.

And first he shut the orbs of the eyes into hollow openings — from that boring, Varro thought, the forehead got its name. He would have them neither fewer nor more than two, because for appearance no number is more perfect than two. He made the ears two for the same reason. Their doubleness carries an incredible beauty, both because each side is adorned by matching the other, and so that voices coming from either side may be gathered in more easily. The shape itself is fashioned wonderfully. He would not have the openings bare and uncovered, which would have been both less becoming and less useful, since the voice might fly past the narrow space of plain hollows and be scattered if the openings themselves did not hold it in — taken in through the hollow windings and kept from echoing back, like those small vessels by which narrow-mouthed jars are usually filled.

These ears, then, get their name from the drinking in of voices, which is why Virgil says:

or else the name comes from the Greeks calling the voice itself audē, from hearing, so that the ears (aures) were named as though they were audes, with one letter changed. Either way, God would not shape them out of soft skin, which would hang down limp and take their beauty away, nor out of hard and solid bone, which would be stiff and immovable and awkward to use. He designed something between the two, so that a softer cartilage might hold them together and they might have a firmness at once fitting and flexible.

In the ears is placed the work of hearing only, as the work of seeing is placed in the eyes — and the sharpness of the eyes is beyond explaining and full of wonder. God covered their orbs, which in the part they see with look like gems, with clear membranes, so that the images of things set opposite them might be thrown back as in a mirror and pass through to the innermost perception. It is through these membranes, then, that the faculty we call the mind sees what is outside. Do not suppose that we see by the striking of images against us, as the philosophers argue, since the work of seeing ought to belong to what sees and not to what is seen; nor by the air being stretched out along with the eyesight; nor by rays pouring out of the eye. If it were so, we would see the ray we turn our eyes toward, and would have to wait until the air, stretched out along with the sight, or the rays poured out, reached the thing that was to be seen.

But since we see at one and the same instant, and mostly see everything set in front of us while we are busy with something else, it is truer and clearer that it is the mind that sees, through the eyes, what is placed before it — as though through windows covered with clear crystal or transparent stone. That is why a person’s mind and intention can often be read from his eyes. To refute this, Lucretius used a thoroughly senseless argument. If the mind sees through the eye, he says, then it would see better with the eyes torn out and dug away, since doors let in more light when they are ripped out along with their posts. In truth his own eyes ought to have been dug out — or rather those of Epicurus, who taught him — so that they might not see; for the torn-out orbs, the burst fibers of the eyes, the blood running from the veins, the flesh growing over the wounds and the scars finally drawn across them can let in no light at all. Unless perhaps he would have eyes made like ears, so that we should see not so much with eyes as with holes, than which nothing could be uglier or more useless.

For how little we would see if the mind had to pay attention from the innermost recesses of the head through narrow slits in caverns! It would be like looking through a stalk of hemlock: a man would see no more than the width of the stalk allowed. For sight, then, it was better that the parts should be gathered into an orb, so that the sight might be spread out wide, and that they should be set in the front of the face beside the parts next to them, so that they might look freely at everything. So the unspeakable power of God’s providence made two orbs as like each other as could be, and bound them together in such a way that they could not only be turned altogether but also moved and directed by measure. And he willed that the orbs themselves should be full of a pure and clear moisture, and that in the middle of it sparks of light should be shut up, which we call the pupils, in which, pure and delicate as they are, the power and the method of seeing are contained. So the mind directs itself through these orbs in order to see, and the sight of both eyes is mingled and joined together in a wonderful way.

Here it pleases me to find fault with the folly of those who want to show that the senses are false, and who collect a great many instances in which the eyes are deceived. Among them is this: that to a madman or a drunk everything looks double — as if the cause of that error were obscure. It happens for this reason, that there are two eyes. But listen to how it happens. The sight of the eyes consists in an exertion of the soul. So, since the mind uses the eyes as windows, as I said above, this happens not only to the drunk and the mad but even to people who are sound in mind and sober. Put an object too close and it will look double, for there is a certain distance and space at which the sight of the two eyes meets. In the same way, if you call the soul back as if to reflection, and let the mind’s exertion slacken, then the sight of each eye is drawn apart and each begins to see on its own. [p]

Exert the mind again and direct the eyesight, and whatever looked double comes together into one. What wonder, then, if the mind, damaged by poison and by the strong influence of wine, cannot direct itself to seeing, just as the feet cannot direct themselves to walking when they are weak from numbness in the sinews — or if the force of madness raging against the brain breaks up the agreement of the eyes? This is so true that with one-eyed men, if they go mad or get drunk, it is simply impossible for them to see any object double. So if the reason why the eyes are deceived is plain, it is clear that the senses are not false. Either they are not deceived, if they are unimpaired and sound; or if they are deceived, still the mind is not deceived, since it recognizes their error.