Pagina 284 di 1391

Some persons fancy that instruction is like giving eyes to the

blind, but we say that the faculty of sight was always there, and

that the soul only requires to be turned round towards the light.

And this is conversion; other virtues are almost like bodily

habits, and may be acquired in the same manner, but intelligence

has a diviner life, and is indestructible, turning either to good

or evil according to the direction given. Did you never observe

how the mind of a clever rogue peers out of his eyes, and the

more clearly he sees, the more evil he does? Now if you take such

an one, and cut away from him those leaden weights of pleasure

and desire which bind his soul to earth, his intelligence will be

turned round, and he will behold the truth as clearly as he now

discerns his meaner ends. And have we not decided that our rulers

must neither be so uneducated as to have no fixed rule of life,

nor so over-educated as to be unwilling to leave their paradise

for the business of the world?