Wisdom [is] before him that hath understanding; but the eyes of a fool [are] in the ends of the earth.
Ver. 24. Wisdom is before him that hath understanding.] The face of an understanding man is wisdom; his very face speaks him wise; the government of his eyes, especially, is an argument of his gravity. a His eyes are in his head, Ecc 2:4 he scattereth away all evil with them. Pro 20:8 He hath oculum irretortum, as Job had; Job 31:1 and Joseph had oculum in metam (which was Ludovica's Vives's motto), his eye fixed upon the mark; he looks right on; Pro 4:25 he goes through the world as one in a deep muse, or as one that hath haste of some special business, and therefore overlooks everything besides it. He hath learned out of Isaiah 33:14,15, that he shall see God to his comfort, must not only "shake his hands from taking gifts," as in the former verse, but also "stop his ears from hearing of blood," and "shut his eyes from seeing of evil." Vitiis nobis in animum per oculos est via, saith Quintilian; b sin entereth into the little world through these windows, and death by sin, as fools find too oft by casting their eyes into the corners of the earth, suffering them to rove at random without restraint, by irregular glancing and inordinate gazing. In Hebrew the same word signifies both an eye and a fountain, to show, saith one, that from the eye, as from a fountain, flows both sin and misery. ‘Shut up, therefore, the five windows, that the house may be full of light,' as the Arabian proverb hath it. We read of one, that making a journey to Rome, and knowing it to be a corrupt place, and a corrupter of others, entered the city with eyes close shut; neither would he see anything there but St Peter's church, which he had a great mind to go visit. Alipius in Augustine being importuned to go to those bloody spectacles of the gladiatory combats, resolved to wink, and did; but hearing an outcry of applause, looked abroad, and was so taken with the sport, that he became an ordinary frequenter of those cruel meetings.
a Vultus index animi. - Profecto occulis animus inhabitat. - Plin,
b Quintil., Declam.