men come infinitely short of what they should achieve were they to make their senses what they might be made.  The old have outlived their opportunity, and the diseased never had it; but the young, who have still an undimmed eye, an undulled ear, and a soft hand; an unblunted nostril, and a tongue which tastes with relish the plainest fare—­the young can so cultivate their senses as to make the narrow ring, which for the old and the infirm encircles things sensible, widen for them into an almost limitless horizon.’

Take heed what you hear, and take heed how you hear.

CHAPTER IV—­EYE-GATE

   ’Mine eye affecteth mine heart.’—­Jeremiah.

‘Think, in the first place,’ says the eloquent author of the Five Gateways of Knowledge, ’how beautiful the human eye is.  The eyes of many of the lower animals are, doubtless, very beautiful.  You must all have admired the bold, fierce, bright eye of the eagle; the large, gentle, brown eye of the ox; the treacherous, green eye of the cat, waxing and waning like the moon; the pert eye of the sparrow; the sly eye of the fox; the peering little bead of black enamel in the mouse’s head; the gem-like eye that redeems the toad from ugliness, and the intelligent, affectionate expression which looks out of the human-like eye of the horse and dog.  There are many other animals whose eyes are full of beauty, but there is a glory that excelleth in the eye of a man.  We realise this best when we gaze into the eyes of those we love.  It is their eyes we look at when we are near them, and it is their eyes we recall when we are far away from them.  The face is all but a blank without the eye; the eye seems to concentrate every feature in itself.  It is the eye that smiles, not the lips; it is the eye that listens, not the ear; it is the eye that frowns, not the brow; it is the eye that mourns, not the voice.  The eye sees what it brings the power to see.  How true is this!  The sailor on the look-out can see a ship where the landsman can see nothing.  The Esquimaux can distinguish a white fox among the white snow.  The astronomer can see a star in the sky where to others the blue expanse is unbroken.  The shepherd can distinguish the face of every single sheep in his flock,’ so Professor Wilson.  And then Dr. Gould tells us in his mystico-evolutionary, Behmen-and-Darwin book, The Meaning and the Method of Life—­a book which those will read who can and ought—­that the eye is the most psychical, the most spiritual, the most useful, and the most valued and cherished of all the senses; after which he adds this wonderful and heart-affecting scientific fact, that in death by starvation, every particle of fat in the body is auto-digested except the cream-cushion of the eye-ball!  So true is it that the eye is the mistress, the queen, and the most precious, to Creator and creature alike, of all the five senses.