Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/50

30 faculty of its own, separate from the life which it derives continually from the  of life and being.

There is yet another caution, to which, on this occasion, I am anxious to call your attention, as your only security against mistaking instrumentals for principals; and thus falling into the dangerous error, for instance, of supposing that, in the grand concern of bodily sight, the eye is a principal, and not merely an instrument. For the truth is (and I am persuaded you will subscribe to it, whensoever you give yourself time to reflect), that the organ of vision, called the eye, doth not, of itself, see, but is only an instrumental medium for the conveyance of sight to some other and higher faculty in the interior of your constitution. For the organ of vision, it is plain, is merely material; and consequently, like every other material substance, is utterly incapable either of seeing or feeling. You must look then to some other source within yourself, before you can discover the wonderful faculty of vision, or that astonishing power which enables you to admit into yourself all the glories and beauties of external nature for your comfort and edification.—And what can this other source be but mind? Yet what is mind, but a substance and form capable of receiving life from its ; consequently, in respect