But how can one be united to beauty, without seeing it? If it be seen
as some thing distinct from oneself, he is not yet fused with it. If
the act of vision imply a relation with an exterior object, we have
no vision; or, at least, this vision consists in the identity of seer
and seen. This vision is a kind of conscience, of self-consciousness;
and if this feeling be too acute, there is even danger of breaking up
this unity. Besides, one must not forget that the sensations of evils
make stronger impressions, and yield feebler knowledge, because the
latter are frittered away by the force of impressions. Thus sickness
strikes sharply (but arouses only an obscure notion); health, on
the contrary, thanks to the calm that characterizes it, yields us a
clearer notion of itself, for it remains quietly within us, because it
is proper to us, and fuses with us. On the contrary, sickness is not
proper to us, but foreign. Consequently it manifests itself vividly,
because it is opposed to our nature; while we, on the contrary, enjoy
but a feeble feeling of ourselves and of what belongs to us. The state
in which we grasp ourselves best is the one in which our consciousness
of ourselves fuses with us. Consequently on high, at the very moment
when our knowledge by intelligence is at its best, we believe that
we are ignorant of it, because we consult sensation, which assures
us that it has seen nothing. Indeed it has not seen anything, and it
never could see anything such (as the intelligible beings). It is
therefore the sensation that doubts; but he who has the ability to
see differs therefrom. Before the seer could doubt, he would have to
cease believing in his very existence; for he could not, so to speak,
externalize himself to consider himself with the eyes of the body.