Page:King Alfred's Old English version of St. Augustine's Soliloquies - Hargrove - 1902.djvu/207

25.24—27.13] A. What commandments?

R. I named them to thee before.

A. Methinks they are very burdensome and very manifold.

R. What one loveth, methinks, is not burdensome.

''A. Nor doth any work seem burdensome to me if I can see and have what I work for. But doubt begetteth heaviness.''

R. Thou graspest it well enough in speech, and well enough thou understandest it. But I can say to thee that I am the faculty of Reason, which argueth with thee—the discursive faculty whose province it is to explain to thee in such wise that thou mayest see God with thy mind's eyes as clearly as thou now seest the sun with the eyes of the body.

''A. Almighty God rezvard thee! I am truly grateful for thy promise to teach it to me so clearly. Although I was ignorant, yet I emerge from this condition to a clearer vision of Him,'' if I come to see Him as I now see the sun. ''Howbeit I do not see the sun so clearly as I would like to. I know very little better what the sun is, though I look on it every day. Still it seemed good to me that I might thus clearly see God.''

R. Now consider very earnestly what I formerly said to thee.

A. I will, so much as possible.

R. First know of a truth that the mind is the eye of the soul; secondly, thou must know that it is needful for one to see what one looketh at; the fourth is what one would see. For every one having eyes first looketh at that which he would see till he hath beheld it. When he hath beheld it then he truly seeth it. But thou must know that I who now speak with thee am Reason, and I am to every human mind what looking is to the eyes. Three things it behooveth the eyes of every human body to have; the fourth is what it seeketh and would draw to them. One is that