Major Paice’s Extracts from the Mualijat-i-Dard Shekohi. 47 
and thus does he ascend from the scale of the brute creation to that of 
angels. In man, therefore, these two senses bear the pre-eminence over 
the other three. 
Of these, however, the sense of hearing has the preference before that of 
sight ; because, although a man be born without this latter sense, he may 
acquire the faculty of speech and reason through the sense of hearing alone, 
and so attain to a proficiency in many branches of science, supposing that 
he is in perfect possession of that sense, excepting only that he cannot form 
any precise idea of colours or figures; whereas, if a person be born of his 
mother without the sense of hearing, he will never be able to speak, nor 
acquire any sort of science, be his sense of sight ever so perfect, excepting 
that by the aid of signs and example he will be able to acquire some 
mechanical! craft. 
But with respect to the knowledge to which we may attain by the nature 
of the reasoning principle, the peculiar excellence of the human mind con- 
sists in its coming prepared from its creation for the acquirement of science 
in all its branches ; just as the animating principle in nature, fraught with 
the germ of growth and increase, sends forth its productions prepared for 
growth and increase. Thus the perfection of this animating principle in 
nature, in its operation on the stone of the date, is seen in having rendered 
this stone capable of growth, and of producing a noble tree. 
While in the present state of existence, the rational mind or spirit 
acquires all its knowledge by means of the faculties of which we have 
spoken; and these faculties are brought to operate through their own 
intrinsic excellence. The senses of hearing and sight are, however, to the 
rational animals, the noblest of their faculties; but to animals without speech 
or reason, these two senses are attended with none of the benefits which we 
have endeavoured to enumerate, those benefits being destined alone for the 
rational mind, 
He that has ascended to the highest stages of science will have found that 
at every step his sight and hearing are gradually on the increase; for do 
we not perceive this in mathematics, when a man has entered the class of 
arithmetic, and he is asked what is the primary and what the secondary in 
numbers? When he becomes instructed that in numbers some are defective, 
as the number four, the parts of which are a half and a fourth, being three 
less than itself by one when added together; some are redundant, as in the 
number twelve, the parts of which are a half, a third, a fourth, and a sixth, 
