Plato on the Apple of the Eye

Plato, Plotinus, Meister Eckhart · Constitution of Man Series · 14 pages

The first half is Plato's physiology of vision from the Timaeus. The head is the most divine part of the body and ruler of the rest, and the gods endowed the front of it with organs informing the forethought of the soul — first constructing light-bearing eyes so that the pure fire within us, akin to the fire of day, flows out through them in a smooth dense stream. In daylight that stream meets a fire-stream coming from the object of vision; like flows out to like and coalesces with it into one kindred substance along the path of sight, which then distributes the motions of everything it touches throughout the body and informs the soul — and that is what we call seeing.

The second half turns the same eye inward, drawing on Plotinus and Meister Eckhart. Looking outward, Psyche sees the shadows and images of other souls; looking inward she evolves her own essence and the reasons she contains. The progression is given in three steps: at first she sees herself; penetrating deeper into self-knowledge she finds within herself both intellect and the orders of beings; going deeper still she perceives, with eyes closed, the celestial hierarchies and the essential unity of being. The last section treats love as its own act, harvesting the spectacle of celestial beauty — love being the eye of the desirer, by whose power the lover can see the beloved, and sight seeing out of time.

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