
§ 28
On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination (480 AD)
Sermon VII : Outward and Inward Morality
Meister Eckhart’s Sermons (1909)
§ 28
On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination (480 AD)
Sermon VII : Outward and Inward Morality
Meister Eckhart’s Sermons (1909)
“The greater perfection a soul aspires after, the more dependent it is upon Divine Grace.”
From the "Fourth Conversation" in The Practice of the Presence of God at Gutenberg.org http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13871.
Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea, Lines 1008–1010 (tr. R. C. Seaton)
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), IX The Practice of Painting
Context: The eye, which is called the window of the soul, is the principal means by which the central sense can most completely and abundantly appreciate the infinite works of nature; and the ear is the second, which acquires dignity by hearing of the things the eye has seen. If you, historians, or poets, or mathematicians had not seen things with your eyes you could not report of them in writing. And if you, O poet, tell a story with your pen, the painter with his brush can tell it more easily, with simpler completeness and less tedious to be understood. And if you call painting dumb poetry, the painter may call poetry blind painting. Now which is the worse defect? to be blind or dumb? Though the poet is as free as the painter in the invention of his fictions they are not so satisfactory to men as paintings; for, though poetry is able to describe forms, actions and places in words, the painter deals with the actual similitude of the forms, in order to represent them. Now tell me which is the nearer to the actual man: the name of man or the image of the man. The name of man differs in different countries, but his form is never changed but by death.
Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART II: OTHER WORLDS, Chapter 20. How the Sphere Encouraged Me in a Vision
Context: I could hear the mild voice of my Companion pointing the moral of my vision, and stimulating me to aspire, and to teach others to aspire. He had been angered at first — he confessed — by my ambition to soar to Dimensions above the Third; but, since then, he had received fresh insight, and he was not too proud to acknowledge his error to a Pupil. Then he proceeded to initiate me into mysteries yet higher than those I had witnessed, shewing me how to construct Extra-Solids by the motion of Solids, and Double Extra-Solids by the motion of Extra-Solids, and all "strictly according to Analogy", all by methods so simple, so easy, as to be patent even to the Female Sex.
The Universe of Experience: A Worldview Beyond Science and Religion (1974)