The Use of Silence

All man's knowledge of the world, with the exception of one item, comes to him through the gateway of his five senses, seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching. The messages that enter through these gateways may provide the stimulus to thought or to emotion, according to their nature; the sight of mathematical symbols written on a page may stimulate the mathematician to an exercise in pure reason, the sight of a smile in the eye and on the lips of a certain face may stimulate the lover to an exercise in the profoundest emotion. The stimulus in each case comes through the gateway of sense.

Religious knowledge and religious experience, however deeply they may come to be rooted in the soul, must enter in the first place through these same five gateways. Our eyes see something, our ears hear the words spoken by a human voice, and our heart is changed. When the Psalmist sang "O taste and see that the Lord is good" he laid down the first principle of the classical method. That is the way we come to know whether a thing is good or not; we taste it or see it or hear it or touch it or smell it and our reason or our emotions make the decision on the strength of the sensory impressions received.