Art. III ch. I. Irregularities of the eyes

CHAPTER I. THE FIRST REASON WHY THE IRREGULARITIES OF THE EYES MAY PROVE A HINDRANCE, NOT ONLY TO PERFECTION, BUT TO SALVATION. HOW CAREFULLY THEY SHOULD BE KEPT IN CHECK.

118. ONE of the noblest of the senses with which our Creator has endowed the human body is doubtless the sense of sight, on account of its lively and far-reaching character, and the readiness with which it performs the actions proper to it; but this sense is the more to be esteemed, because, more than the others, it furnishes the mind with those phantasms out of which are formed the ideas whereon its judgments are grounded, its reasonings are framed, and by which all its rational acts are performed. But on this very account is this same sense a greater source of danger when not guarded; for then it supplies the soul with images prejudicial, not only to its perfection, but also to its salvation.

119. To make this most important truth intelligible, we must lay down, according to the teaching of philosophers, that every one of our passions is in strict dependence on the imagination, which they all of them serve, and to which they are wholly subject, so that they cannot act but by the impulse of the fancies which are conceived in the imagination. Thus, for instance, the imagination presents to the appetite the image of some delectable object, the sensitive appetite is at once excited, and the passion of love awakened; if, on the other hand, a hateful image be presented, the appetite is at once inflamed with hatred and horror. Whenever an object is presented as suited to our nature, the appetite is at once stimulated to desire its possession. The same holds good of all the other sensible emotions of the soul which go by the name of passions. On the other hand, it is certain that the greater part of the images in our mind depend for their formation on the eyes, which transmit to the imagination the elements whereof it forms its images. According to that trite old adage, "Nothing is in the mind but what has first passed through the senses"—a saying applied to the eyes and the other senses alike. We may hence infer that the unruly motions of the passions, which give the soul so much trouble, take their rise in the careless use of the sense of sight, which sends on to the imagination the images of the objects whereby the disorderly motions of the passion are stirred up. Thus, if there are excited in man the passions of sensual love, of unlawful desire, of impure affection, the blame lies at the door of the sight; for, when this is not kept in due check, objects are represented to the imagination by means of the visual species, as pleasing, lovable, and worthy to be possessed, while they are in reality to be shunned and abhorred.

120. It was in the conviction of this great truth that holy Job made a covenant with his eyes not to fix them on the countenance of a woman, knowing full well that heedless looks are followed by dangerous images, which excite unclean emotions; these in their turn solicit the free consent of the will, and this consent entails sin, the ruin and perdition of the soul. The holy man says that he had made a covenant with his eyes never to think of a virgin. It would seem that he ought to have said, not to look at a virgin, because looking, not thought, is the natural function of the eye But he was quite correct in this expression, as to look at and to think on an object are so inseparably connected, that they appear to be one and the same act. Hence, having settled with himself not to think on dangerous objects, such as young women undoubtedly are, he resolved not to look at them, considering one the same thing as the other. The Holy Ghost says, with still greater emphasis, Turn away thy face from a woman dressed up, and gaze not about upon another's beauty, for many have perished by the beauty of a woman. But, wherefore, may it be said, should we fear such dreadful consequences from a simple look? For this reason: the look is inseparably connected with the unclean images which excite lust, and kindle the fires of impurity. Close, then, thine eyes, or guard them with care, if thou desire not to fall into the like perdition, if thou wilt not have to shed bitter tears, and to say with the Prophet Jeremiah, "Mine eyes have pillaged my soul, by the thoughts, the affections, the unclean passions they have stirred up within me."

121. So true is the view here taken, that profane poets, in their empty songs, commonly attribute to the eyes the origin of their amorous transports, so that one of them might truly say, "Know well, if thou knowest it not already, that the eyes are the guides of love, introducing it into the soul by means of their glances." But this sentiment is still more pithily expressed by the author of Ecclesiasticus, in these two brief words, I saw, and I perished. Scarce had I glanced at the forbidden object but I was undone. The same truth was also well expressed by a sculptor in a line which he engraved at the foot of his statue. It was a sleeping Venus, and these were the words: "Passer-by, take care not to awaken the goddess; for if she open her eyes, she will cause thine to close." As much as to say, that by unwary glances of the bodily eye at dangerous objects, we close the eyes of the understanding, which is blinded by the emotions of sensual passion.

122. But wherefore seek authorities among profane authors? Are there not in Holy Writ notable examples of persons famed even for great virtue, who, through a single glance, have been consumed by the fire of impure love? How came David, that man according to God's own heart, the chosen ancestor and Prophet of the Messiah that was to come, who in his lofty contemplations was so highly honoured by the familiar intercourse of God,—how came he to fall into adultery, save by a heedless glance which he cast at Bersabee from the roof of his palace? What made the two elders, in a ripe old age, with gray hair and mature mind, judges too of the people, tempt the virtue of the chaste Susanna? What, but their looking at her walking in her garden? They gazed at her, and returned to gaze, and thereby kindled in their chilled hearts the flames of impure desire. Every one knows with what unbridled passion the wife of Putiphar solicited the chaste Joseph, and what violence she made use of to overcome his constancy. But whence this violence in a woman, who by nature is timid and modest? She cast her eyes upon him, as the inspired text tells us, and by this look was quickly undone. What robbed Dinah, the modest daughter of Jacob, of her virginity and her honour? What, but the lust of looking curiously about her? But what were the results of this license in gazing upon all that was going on? Listen to what the Spirit of God tells us. The prince of the land carried her off and ravished her. What enslaved Holofernes, that formidable foe to the people of Israel, and made him the prey of a feeble woman? The Sacred Volume says that the toils, the chains which bound his heart, and which laid him, conqueror as he was, at the feet of her who had led his heart captive, were her sandals, which ravished his eyes, and her beauty, which made him a slave.

123. But there is no end to the evils caused by freedom of the eyes. We might as well pretend to number the stars of heaven, or the grains of sand on the sea-shore. Suffice it to say, that the wholesale destruction of the world at the Flood took its rise from license in the use of sight, as Holy Writ witnesses. The proximate and immediate cause of this universal ruin was indeed sin of the flesh, or, as the Gloss has it, man was too much given to carnal sins. But the origin of this corruption, as plainly stated in the inspired writings, was the too great liberty men allowed their eyes in looking at women. Then it was that God thundered forth the dreadful sentence. By looking they had become carnal, and because they were carnal they were hateful to Him, and were punished by that mighty flood that swept them all away. Let him, then, who makes profession of a devout life shut down his eyes, let him bolt the windows by which death makes its way into the soul; nor let him rely upon his virtue, or upon his former experience: for, as St. Gregory says, "He who through these windows of the body, recklessly looks abroad, very often falls, even against his will, into the sweetnesses of sin, and being fast fettered by desires, begins to will what before he had never willed."

124. Granting, however, that it might happen to some one individual not to fall into grievous sin by allowing his eyes this unbecoming freedom, certain it is that, in the words of St. Gregory, unholy thoughts and unchaste emotions must, whether he will it or not, enter the mind after such looks. And even though they be rejected, they usually leave after them some stain on the conscience, or at least overcloud the serenity of the mind, and disturb the peace of heart so essential to the practice of virtue and holy prayer. Hence, if we would keep our minds free from these wanton thoughts, which, if not morally sinful, are ever full of deep peril, we must, concludes St. Gregory, keep a strict watch over this excitable sense, in the conviction that it is not lawful to look at what we may not desire.

125. And here it will not be out of place to relate a circumstance mentioned by St. Augustine in the Sixth Book of his Confessions concerning his friend Alypius, for it throws a peculiar light upon the influence exercised by the eyes over the affections of the heart, nor over such only as are mild and gentle—of which we have so far been speaking—but even over the fiercer passions; all which is well suited to our present purpose. Alypius, a bosom friend of St. Augustine, happened to be staying in Rome at the time of the gladiatorial games, to which bloody spectacle the people flocked in crowds. He was invited by some friends to go there with them, but abhorring those cruel diversions, which borrowed their attractions from wounds and bloodshed, he refused the invitation. Being however dragged thither, as it were, by his acquaintances, he yielded to their violence, but with a full determination to be present at the show in body only and to be absent in mind, and not to cast even so much as a single glance at the inhuman scene. He went, and taking his seat with the others in the public amphitheatre, he closed his eyes, and diverted his attention to objects more worthy of an intellectual being. On a sudden, at a dexterous home-thrust given by one of the gladiators to his adversary, the theatre echoed with shouts of applause and acclamations. At this sound, Alypius could not refrain from opening his eyes and looking. At this glance he was, as St. Augustine says, wounded in spirit far more fatally than the gladiator was wounded in body, and fell more miserably than the man who was stricken to the ground. On opening his eyes, he began to look with interest at the fierce struggle of the gladiators, to delight in their cruel conflicts, and to become, as it were, intoxicated with this bloodthirsty pastime. Further, this barbarous taste got such hold of him that he began to shout and applaud, mingling his voice with the cries of the people. Things came to such a pass, says the Saint, that, far from needing that any one should invite him to go, or show him the way, in order to return to such scenes, he not only went thither by himself, but induced others to go with him. So much had this inhuman and barbarous diversion won the mastery over his heart at one single look. Now, if a sudden glance could have power enough to change a well-regulated and cultured mind like that of Alypius, and to transform its tendencies into inclinations so cruel and foreign to our nature, as to take delight in the wounds and death of a fellow-creature; what will not be the power of an unguarded look when its object is a person of another sex, agreeable to the eye, of graceful and charming manners, fitted in all respects to excite in the heart an agreeable emotion, which it will greedily drink in, and which will prove at length a mortal draught of deadly poison?

126. Our eyes must then be duly and modestly guarded, as, failing this, not only can there be no spirituality, but not even every-day virtue. "Would we remain with our souls uplifted to heaven, let us," says St. Augustine, "keep our eyes fixed upon the earth." We have already remarked, in speaking of our other senses, that the eyes are the soul's windows. St. Augustine goes further, and says that they are the door of the soul. People, save with rare exceptions, enter a house by the door; few by the windows, as the former is by far the easier mode of ingress. And, moreover, to enter into a house by the door, it suffices that it be open; not so with the windows. So that, according to St. Augustine, if the other senses are the windows whereby sin enters, and the eyes are the door, these have but to be left open for sin to make its way into our souls.