Gabirol does not give us any test by which we can tell whether a given act or feeling belongs to the lower or higher nature except to say that the appetites are diseases of the body which must be cured; that they do not belong to the rational soul, and to satisfy them is not the attainment of a good. Gabirol's method of treating virtue and vice, or rather the virtues and the vices, is to relate them to the five senses and the four humors in man, which in turn correspond to the four elements, fire, air, water, earth, and the four primitive qualities, hot, cold, moist, dry. This division of the elements, the humors, the qualities and the senses was a commonplace of the physiological and medical science of the time. We have met it in Isaac Israeli (see above, p. 3), and it goes back to Aristotle and Galen and Hippocrates. The originality, though a queer one to be sure, of Gabirol is to bring the ethical qualities of man into relation with all these. The approximations are forced in every instance and often ludicrous. Instead of attempting to give a psychological analysis of the qualities in question, he lays stress on their physical basis in one of the five senses, as we shall see presently. The great world, we are told, was created out of the four elements, and similarly man, the microcosm, also consists of four natures corresponding to the elements. Thus the four humors, upon the harmonious combination of which the health of man's body depends, viz., blood, phlegm, black gall, and red gall, correspond respectively to air, water, earth, fire. Man is endowed besides with five senses. If he is wise he will use his senses properly and in the right measure, like a skilful physician who calculates carefully what proportion of each drug should be prescribed. The sense of sight is the noblest of the senses, and is related to the body as the sun to the world. The philosophers have a wonderful saying concerning the eye that there are spiritual tints in the soul which are visible in the movements of the eyelids--pride and haughtiness, humility and meekness. Accordingly the ethical qualities due to the sense of sight are pride, meekness, modesty and impudence, besides the subordinate qualities derived from these. Pride is common in a person of a warm disposition in whom the red gall predominates. Many wise men exhibit this quality out of place, fools adopt it until they are mastered by it, and it is prevalent in youth. It may be useful when it keeps a man away from vice and unworthy things, inspiring him to rise to nobility of character and the service of God. But generally it is useless and leads to many evils, especially if it causes one to be self-opinionated, refusing to seek the advice of anyone. When a man sees this quality gaining mastery over him, he should consider the origin and end of existing things. When he sees that all things are destined to pass away, and himself likewise, his pride will change to humility.