De Specialibus Legibus (lib. i‑iv)

And this faculty seems to me to deserve this pre-eminence, since it is more nearly related to the soul than any one of the other outward senses, for they all of them have some kind of connection with the intellect; but this one obtains the first and principal rank as the nearest relation does in a private house.

And any one may conjecture this from many circumstances, for who is there who does not know that when persons are delighted their eyes betray their pleasure, and sparkle, but that when they are grieved their eyes are full of depression and heaviness; and if any heavy burden of grief oppresses, and crushes, and overwhelms the mind, they weep; and if anger obtains and preponderance, the eyes swell, and become bloodshot and fiery;

and again change so as to be gentle and soft when the anger is relaxed. Again, when the man is immersed in deep thought and contemplation, the eyes seem fixed as if they in a manner joined in his gravity; but in the case of those who are of no great wisdom the sight wanders, because of their vacancy of intellect, and is restless, and in short the eyes sympathise with the affections of the soul, and are wont to change along with it in innumerable alternations, on account of the closeness of their connection with it; for it seems to me that there is no one visible thing which God has made so complete a representation of that which is invisible as the sight is of the mind.

If therefore any one has ever plotted against this most excellent and most dominant of all the outward senses, namely sight, so as ever to have struck out the eye of a free man, let him suffer the same infliction himself, but not so if he have only struck out the eye of a slave; not because he is entitled to pardon, or because the injury which he has done is less, but because the man who has been injured will have a still worse master if he has been mutilated in retaliation, since he will for ever bear a grudge against him for

Therefore the law has provided that the man who has thus done injury to his slave shall not be allowed to escape free, and yet has not commanded that the man who has already suffered the loss of his eye shall be ill-treated still further, enjoining that if any one strikes out the eye of his servant he shall without hesitation grant him his freedom;

for thus he will suffer a double punishment for the actions which he has committed, in being deprived of the value of his servant and also of his services, and thirdly, which is worse than either of the things already mentioned, in being compelled to do good to his enemy in the most important matters, whom very likely he wished to be able to ill-treat for ever. And the slave has a double consolation for the evils which he has been subjected to in being not only emancipated, but also in having escaped a cruel and inhuman master.

The law also commands that if any one strike out the tooth of a slave he shall bestow his freedom on the slave; why is this? because life is a thing of great value, and because nature has made the teeth the instruments of life, as being those by which the food is eaten. And of the teeth some are fitted for eating meat and all other eatable food, and on that account are called incisors, or cutting teeth; others are called molar teeth from their still further grinding and smoothing what has been cut by the incisors;

on which account the Creator and Father of the universe, who is not accustomed to make anything which is not appointed for some particular use, did not do with the teeth as he did with every other part of the body, and make them at once, at the first creation of the man, considering that as while an infant he was only intended to be fed upon milk they would be a superfluous burden in his way, and would be a severe injury to the breasts, filled as they are at that time with springs of milk, from which moist food is derived, as they would in that case be bitten by the child while sucking the milk.

Therefore, having waited for a suitable season (and that is when the child is weaned), he then causes the infant to put forth the teeth which he had