hat picture can be painted and
impressed, where the pupils of the eyes are dispersed in water, the
water into steam, the steam into flame, the flame into air, and this in
other and other without end: the subject of sense and cognition turns
for ever upon the wheel of mutation?

MIN. Movement is change, and that which is changeable works and operates
ever differently, because the conception and affection follow the reason
and condition of the subject; and he who sees other and other different
and differently must necessarily be blind as regards that beauty which
is one and alone and is the same unity and entity.

SEV. So it is. The seventh, contained allegorically in the sentiment of
the seventh blind man, is the result of the fire of the affections,
whence some become impotent and incapable of comprehending the truth, by
making the affection precede the intellect. There are those who love
before they understand: whence it happens that all things appear to them
according to the colour of their affections, whereas he who would
understand the truth by means of contemplation, ought to be perfectly
pure in thought.

MIN. In truth, one sees how much diversity there is in meditators and
inquirers, because some, according to their habits and early fundamental
discipline, proceed by means of numbers,[AE] others by means of images,
others by means of order and disorder, others through composition and
division, others by separation and congregation, others by inquiry and
doubt, others by discussions and definitions, others by interpretations
and decypherings of voices, words, and dialects, so that some are
mathematical philosophers, some metaphysicians, others logicians, others
grammarians; so there are divers contemplators, who with different
affections set themselves to study and apply the meaning of written
sentences; whence we find that the same light of truth, expressed in the
selfsame book, serves with the same words the proposition of so
numerous, diverse, and contrary sects.[AF]

[AE] Number is, as the great writer (Balzac) thought, an Entity,
and, at the same time, a Breath emanating from what he termed God,
and what we call the ALL; the breath which alone could organize the
physical kosmos.--("The Secret Doctrine.")

[AF] As the Bible serves as the basis for all the different
Protestant sects.

SEV. That is to say, that the affections are very powerful in hindering
the comprehension of the