Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Dear Miss Coleworth, ℅ Mr. Josiah Coleworth

I am writing to you instead of speaking in person because of the personal nature of discussing the senses, as we began to do when I last visited your family. The senses are both personal and according to human nature, so I do not want to neglect the topic merely out of respect for individual feelings. Hopefully one can retain personal distance through an intermediary such as pen and paper as only the sense of sight is involved in reading the words.

If I may speculate. It is the human senses that initially detect relationship between diverse objects, visible and invisible. The invisible is felt mainly by emotions. Humans place value on things, many times based on feelings, either higher or lower ones. For example, through taste we determine which foods and their various combinations are good and which are not. Regulating the senses is our conscience. Though a food may be “good”, judgment determines when and how much of it we eat. A sensual person does not use judgment as much as one who lives more in his head, so to speak. A person who lives in his head may have different troubles regulating his idealism, however, but that is another topic.

In addition to judgment, we also have a spirit that if rightly related to, can guide us above the senses, or help us put them in their proper place. A spiritual person isn’t solely reliant on their senses and emotions, nor on their rationality, but receives inspiration and direction from their relationship to God. This relationship takes much cultivation.

Therefore, as you so astutely observed, relationship is the binding or repelling force between diverse objects.

Respectfully,
Sir Henry John Essex


Catherine struggled with her mixed feelings after reading Sir Henry’s letter. During their initial talk, she had been chiefly motivated by a desire to understand, but she had also been impacted by the personal nature of the senses discussed. Indeed the question of hoping for more had presented itself. She also pondered the idea of putting emotions in the same category as the senses, as if they were as common and automatic as physical reactions. She decided that she should pursue this thought on paper also.