heavens, as seen even here upon earth, which gave birth to that
national and hereditary philosophy (as Theophrastus calls it), which
was thus excited to a desire of knowledge. But those persons will in a
most especial degree enjoy this philosophy, who, while they were only
inhabitants of this world and enveloped in darkness, were still
desirous of looking into these things with the eye of their mind.

XX. For if those men now think that they have attained something who
have seen the mouth of the Pontus, and those straits which were passed
by the ship called Argo, because,

From Argos she did chosen men convey,
Bound to fetch back the Golden Fleece, their prey;

or those who have seen the straits of the ocean,

Where the swift waves divide the neighboring shores
Of Europe, and of Afric;

what kind of sight do you imagine that will be when the whole earth is
laid open to our view? and that, too, not only in its position, form,
and boundaries, nor those parts of it only which are habitable, but
those also that lie uncultivated, through the extremities of heat and
cold to which they are exposed; for not even now is it with our eyes
that we view what we see, for the body itself has no senses; but (as
the naturalists, ay, and even the physicians assure us, who have opened
our bodies, and examined them) there are certain perforated channels
from the seat of the soul to the eyes, ears, and nose; so that
frequently, when either prevented by meditation, or the force of some
bodily disorder, we neither hear nor see, though our eyes and ears are