d a considerable
acquaintance with literature. Diodorus the Stoic was blind, and lived many
years at my house. He, indeed, which is scarcely credible, besides
applying himself more than usual to philosophy, and playing on the flute,
agreeably to the custom of the Pythagoreans, and having books read to him
night and day, in all which he did not want eyes, contrived to teach
geometry, which, one would think, could hardly be done without the
assistance of eyes, telling his scholars how and where to draw every line.
They relate of Asclepiades, a native of Eretria, and no obscure
philosopher, when some one asked him what inconvenience he suffered from
his blindness, that his reply was, "He was at the expense of another
servant." So that, as the most extreme poverty may be borne, if you
please, as is daily the case with some in Greece; so blindness may easily
be borne, provided you have the support of good health in other respects.
Democritus was so blind he could not distinguish white from black: but he
knew the difference betwixt good and evil, just and unjust, honourable and
base, the useful and useless, great and small. Thus one may live happily
without distinguishing colours; but without acquainting yourself with
things, you cannot; and this man was of opinion, that the intense
application of the mind was taken off by the objects that presented
themselves to the eye, and while others often could not see what was
before their feet, he travelled through all infinity. It is reported also
that Homer(120) was blind, but we observe his painting, as well as his
poetry. What country, what coast, what part of Greece, what military
attacks, what dispositions of battle, what army, what ship, what motions
of men and animals can be mentioned which he has not described in such a
manner as to enable us to see what he could not see himself? What, then!
can we imagine that Homer, or any other learned man, has ever been in want
of pleasure and entertainment for his mind? Were it not so, would
Anaxagoras, or this very Democritus, have left their estates and
patrimonies, and given themselves up to the pursuit of acquiring this
divine pleasure? It is thus that the poets who have represented Tiresias
the Augur as a wise man and blind, never exhibit him as bewailing his
blindness. And Homer, too, after he had described Polyphemus as a monster
and a wild man, represents him talking with his ram, and speaking of his
good fortune, inasmuch as he co