על אברהם ל״אOn Abraham 31
א׳
1[160] Let us leave out of consideration those senses which do but fatten in its manger the beast which shares our nature, lust, and examine the one which does lay claim to reason, hearing. When its travelling is tense and at its fullest, that is when the violent winds with their long, sweeping sound or the loud thunders with their terrific claps make themselves heard, it halts within the air that surrounds the earth.
ב׳
2[161] But the eyes leave earth and in an instant reach heaven, and the boundaries of the universe, east, west, north and south alike, and when they arrive draw the understanding to the observation of what they have seen.
ג׳
3[162] And the understanding affected in like manner is not quiescent, but, unsleeping and constantly in motion as it is, takes the sight as the starting-point for its power of observing the things of the mind, and proceeds to investigate whether these phenomena are uncreated or had some beginning of creation, whether they are infinite or finite, whether there is one world or more than one, whether the four elements make up all things, or on the other hand heaven and its contents enjoy a special nature of their own and have been given a substance which differs from the others and is more divine.
ד׳
4[163] Further, if the world has been created, who is the Creator? What is His essence and quality? What was His purpose in making it? What does He do now and what is His occupation and way of life? And all the other questions which the curious mind with good sense ever at its side is wont to explore.
ה׳
5[164] But these and the like belong to philosophy, whence it is clear that wisdom and philosophy owe their origin to no other of our faculties but to the princess of the senses, sight. And this alone of all the bodily region did God preserve when He destroyed the four, because they were in slavery to flesh and the passions of flesh, while the sight had the strength to stretch its neck upwards, and to look, and to find in the contemplation of the world and its contents pleasures far better than those of the body.
ו׳
6[165] It was fitting, then, that the one of the five senses which form, so to speak, a group of five cities, should receive a special privilege and continue to exist when the others were destroyed, because its range is not confined to mortal things, as theirs is, but it aspires to find a new home amid imperishable beings and rejoice in their contemplation.
ז׳
7[166] And therefore it is excellently said, when the oracles represent this city first as small and then as not small, figuring thereby sight. For sight is said to be small in that it is a little part of all we contain, but great in that great are its desires, since it is the whole world and heaven which it yearns to survey.