ceive
the same external phenomena by means of them. For, in the first place,
their senses differ in degrees of power. Some men's eyes are telescopic,
some microscopic, and some are blind. Some men can but partially
distinguish colors, others not at all. Some have acute hearing, others
are deaf. And secondly, what men perceive through the senses differs
according to what is about them. A man living in China cannot see Mont
Blanc or the city of New York; a man on the other side of the moon can
never see the earth. A man living in the year 1871 cannot see Alexander
the Great or the Apostle Paul. And thirdly, two persons may be looking at
the same thing, and with senses of the same degree of power, and yet one
may be able to see what the other is not able to see. Three men, one a
geologist, one a botanist, and one a painter, may look at the same
landscape, and one will see the stratification, the second will see the
flora, and the third the picturesque qualities of the scene. As regards
outsight then, though men in general have the same senses to see with,
what they see depends (1) on their quality of sense, (2) on their position
in space and time, (3) and on their state of mental culture.

That which is true of the perception of external phenomena is also true of
the perception of internal things.

Insight, or intuition, has the same limitations as outsight. These are (1)
the quality of the faculty of intuition; (2) the inward circumstances or
position of the soul; (3) the soul's culture or development. Those who
deny the existence of an intuitive faculty, teaching that all knowledge
comes from without through the senses, sometimes say that if there were
such a faculty as intuition, men would all possess intuitively the same
knowledge of moral and spiritual truth. They might as well say that, as
all men have eyes, all must see the same external objects.

All men have more or less of the intuitive faculty, but some have much
more than others. Those who have the most are called, by way of eminence,
inspired men. But among these there is a difference as regards the objects
which are presented by God, in the order of his providence, to their
intuitive faculty. Some he places inwardly among visions of beauty, and
they are inspired poets and artists. Others he places inwardly amid
visions of temporal and human life, and they become inspired discoverers
and inventors. And others he places amid visions of religious truth, and
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