[236] This is what we find in the scriptures read literally; but those who can contemplate facts stripped of the body and in naked reality, those who live with the soul rather than with the body, will say that of these nine kings, four are the power exercised within us by the four passions, pleasure, desire, fear and grief, and that the five are the five senses, sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch.
[237] For these nine are in a sense invested with sovereignty and are our kings and rulers but not all in the same way. For the five are subject to the four, and are forced to pay them the tolls and tributes determined by nature.
[238] Griefs and pleasures and fears and desires arise out of what we see or hear or smell or taste or touch, and none of the passions would have any strength of itself if it were not furnished with what the senses supply;
[239] for these supplies constitute the forces of the passions, taking the form of colours and shapes, or sounds spoken or heard, or flavours, or scents, or the qualities attached to things tangible, soft and hard or rough and smooth or warm and cold, all of which are supplied through the senses to each of the passions.
[240] And while the said tributes are rendered the alliance between the kings holds good, but when they are no longer paid discord and wars at once arise, and this obviously happens when old age with its pains arrives. For then, while none of the passions is weaker, and perhaps is even stronger than of old, yet the eyes are dim and the ears dull of hearing and each of the other senses blunted, so that it cannot in the same way judge each thing with accuracy or make the same contribution in amount as before. And so, weakened all round as they are and already giving way of themselves, it is natural that they should be easily routed by the opposing passions.
[241] There is much philosophical truth in the saying that of the five kings two fell into the wells and three took to flight. For touch and taste descend to the lowest recesses of the body and transmit to its inward parts what may properly be dealt with by them; but eyes and ears and smell for the most part pass outside and escape enslavement by the body.
[242] All this the man of worth was watching from his lair, and when he saw trouble festering, where but now was alliance and friendship, and war instead of peace arising between the nine kingdoms, with the four competing against the five for the sovereign power, he seized his opportunity and suddenly made the attack, ambitious to establish in the soul democracy, the best of constitutions, instead of the rule of tyrants and overlords, and legality and justice instead of lawlessness and injustice which hitherto prevailed.
[243] All this is no fable of my invention, but a fact, and that one of the surest which we may observe in ourselves. For the senses, though often they may maintain concord with the passions and provide them with the objects which they perceive, often too revolt and are unwilling any longer to pay the same dues or unable to do so because of the presence of reason, the chastener. For when reason puts on its panoply of the virtues and the doctrines and the lore which embody them, armed with this irresistible power it mightily overcomes. For corruptible and incorruptible may not live together.
[244] Now the nine overlords, the four passions and the five senses, are corruptible and the sources of corruption, but the truly divine and holy Word, whose stronghold is in the virtues, whose place in the order of number is tenth, the supremely perfect number, comes to the contest and with the help of the mightier power of God wins an easy victory over the said overlords.