You do not distinguish between the disposition towards the Divine
light and the apprehension of the same. Certainly I do not deny that it
requires time to dispose oneself, discourse, study and fatigue; but as
we say that change takes place in time, and generation in an instant,
and as we see that with time, the windows are opened, but the sun enters
in a moment, so does it happen similarly in this case.
The fourth, represented in the following, is not really unworthy, like
that which results from the habit of believing in the false opinions of
the vulgar, which are very far removed from the opinions of
philosophers, and are derived from the study of vulgar philosophies,
which are by the multitude considered the more true, the more they
appeal to common sense. And this habit is one of the greatest and
strongest disadvantages, because as Alcazele and Averroes showed, it is
like that which happens to those persons who from childhood and youth
are in the habit of eating poison, and have become such, that it is
converted into sweet and proper nutriment, and on the other hand, they
abominate those things which are really good and sweet according to
common nature; but it is most worthy, because it is founded upon the
habit of looking at the true light; the which habit cannot come into use
for the multitude, as we have said. This blindness is heroic, and is of
such a kind that it can worthily satisfy the present heroic blind man,
who is so far from troubling himself about it that he is able to explain
every other sight, and he would crave nothing else from the community
save a free passage and progress in contemplation, for he finds himself
usually hampered and blocked by obstacles and opposition.
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