Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume V/On the Soul and its Origin/Book II/Chapter 3

Chapter 3.—The Difference Between the Senses of the Body and Soul.

Again, I wonder whether this man taught you the difference between the bodily senses and the sensibilities of the soul; and whether you, who were a person of considerable age and position before you took lessons of this man, used to consider to be one and the same that faculty by which white and black are distinguished, which sparrows even see as well as ourselves, and that by which justice and injustice are discriminated, which Tobit also perceived even after he lost the sight of his eyes. If you held the identity, then, of course, when you heard or read the words, “Lighten my eyes, that I sleep not in death,” you merely thought of the eyes of the body. Or if this were an obscure point, at all events when you recalled the words of the apostle, “The eyes of your heart being enlightened,” you must have supposed that we possessed a heart somewhere between our forehead and cheeks. Well, I am very far from thinking this of you, so that this instructor of yours could not have given you such a lesson.