with foliage,[35] no
oak bedecked with horns, no beech garlanded with the skins of beasts,
no mound whose engirdling hedge proclaims its sanctity, no tree-trunk
hewn into the semblance of a god, no turf still wet with libations, no
stone astream with precious unguents. For these are but small things,
and though there be a few that seek them out and do them worship, the
majority note them not and pass them by.

[Footnote 35: _frondibus_, cod. Florent. 29. 2 man. primi
correctoris.]

_Man's sight compared with that of the eagle._

2. But such was not the opinion of my master Socrates. For once when
he saw a youth of handsome appearance who remained for a long time
without uttering a syllable, he said to him, 'Say something, that I
may see what you are like.' For Socrates felt that a man who spoke not
at all was in a sense invisible, since he held that it was not with
the bodily vision, but with the mind's eye and the sight of the soul
that men should be regarded. In this he disagreed with the soldier in
Plautus, who says,

_One man that has eyes is better by far as a witness than
ten that have ears._

Indeed, for the purpose of examining men he had practically reversed
the meaning of the line to

_One man that has ears is better by far as a witness than
ten that have eyes._

Moreover, if the judgements of the eye were of greater value than
those of the soul, we should assuredly have to yield the palm for
wisdom to the eagle. For we men cannot see things far removed from us
nor yet things that are very near us, but all of us to a certain
extent are blind. And if you confine us to the eyes alone with their
dim earthly vision, the words of the great poet will be very true,
that a cloud as it were is shed upon our eyes and we cannot see beyond
a stone's cast. The eagle, on the other hand, soars exceeding high in
heaven to the very clouds, and rides on his pinions through all that
space where there is rain and snow, regions beyond whose heights
thunderbolts and lightnings have no place, even to the very floor of
heaven and the topmost verge of the storms of earth. And having
towered thus high, with gentle motion he turns his great body to glide
to left or right, directing his wings, that are as sails, whither he
will by the movement of his tail, which, small though it be, serves as
a rudder. Thence he gazes down on the world, staying awhile in that
far height[36] the ceaseless oarage of his win