CHAPTER XXIII.
on the power of speaking.
Every man will read a book with more pleasure or even with more ease, if it is written in fairer characters. Therefore every man will also listen more readily to what is spoken, if it is signified by appropriate and becoming words. We must not say then that there is no faculty of expression: for this affirmation is the characteristic of an impious and also of a timid man. Of an impious man, because he undervalues the gifts which come from God, just as if he would take away the commodity of the power of vision, or of hearing, or of seeing. Has then God given you eyes to no purpose? and to no purpose has he infused into them a spirit[1] so strong and of such skilful contrivance as to reach a long way and to fashion the forms of things which are seen? What messenger is so swift and vigilant? And to no purpose has he made the interjacent atmosphere so efficacious and elastic that the vision penetrates through the atmosphere which is in a manner moved?[2] And to no purpose has he made light, without the presence of which there would be no use in any other thing?
Man, be neither ungrateful for these gifts nor yet forget the things which are superior to them. But indeed for the power of seeing and hearing, and indeed for life itself, and for the things which contribute to support it, for the fruits which are dry, and for wine and oil give thanks to God: but remember that he has given you something else better than all these, I mean the power of using them, proving them and estimating the value of each. For what is that
- ↑ The word for 'spirit' is πνεῦμα, a vital spirit, an animal spirit, a nervous fluid, as Schweighaeuser explains it, or as Plutarch says (De Placit. Philosoph. iv. 15), 'the spirit which has the power of vision, which permeates from the chief faculty of the mind to the pupil of the eye;' and in another passage of the same treatise (iv. 8), 'the instruments of perception are said to be intelligent spirits (πνεύματα νοερά) which have a motion from the chief faculty of the mind to the organs.'
- ↑ See Schweig.'s note.
