It is useless, therefore, for any man who is still a slave to his senses, to attempt to attain wisdom or arrive at truth. His mind is full of illusions, produced by those senses, and the truth will be obscured. As well might an astronomer scan the heavens with a bent reflector or a cracked lens. This is sufficient to account for the impotence of so many of our scientific theories and metaphysical systems when we seek a beacon - light by which to guide our daily steps in life. Many of the great intellectual fabrics of modern civilization have been evolved by the unawakened minds of people under the delusions of the senses.
Wisdom can only come to the pure.
These wise old masters set themselves first to purify the mind, that it might become a faithful reflector of the Truth. We, in our insane and conceited folly, have turned our rusty and clouded glasses to the heavens, hoping to see something else besides the cobwebs and spiders on the lenses. The few simple but eternal truths, which a child knows, are sufficient to enable us to purify our minds. Brotherly love, mutual forbearance, justice, calmness, and the like, are truths which we recognize independently of the intellect. Children and savages know them, and even the great masters of materialistic scepticism act upon these principles, though they do not include them in their philosophy.