Athenians, Part I

Athenians, I know that the case is unusual, but I would like to remind you that it is not without precedent, as the prosecution would have you believe; in fact, though it may appear remarkable, let us remember first that all men are prone to astigmatism, myopia, and finally blindness in the onset of their age, so that even as our reason develops, the precision and accuracy of our sensual faculties diminishes. Still, this decline in vision is compensated inversely by an ascendant intelligence, or should be, if only the intellect apply to its senses all those correctives – and I mean eyewear, laser surgery, whatever else – that it has discovered through its consideration and study of optometry.

As things are, the reverse is so much more often the case: that a faltering eye incites and cultivates rather a certain feebleness of the spirit; thus it should seem hardly remarkable that, if the most extraordinary phenomena show themselves to us every day, nonetheless, requiring of our discernment more precision than the tiniest of microbes (whose omnipresence in our lives is, for all their invisibility, no less remarkable), should we fail to employ our reason, as it advances, in order to check the retreat of our senses, surely it will pervert the truth of this world into a falsehood – namely that such phenomena do not exist (just because they are not apparent!) – when nothing could be further from the truth.

So when my accusers allege that I engage in slander, that I perjure and busy myself with what is none of my concern, while I am a detriment and even a threat to those properties that are under the guardianship and care of all who hold virtue dearly, citing this as evidence, that there is a certain Mr. Leibowitz who claims to read from and speak the secret testimony of Mr. William Shakespeare, delivered from beyond the grave, as if only a madman could possibly claim to speak for the deceased, it shows rather their own lack of vision, a failure of their proper intelligence, than any impropriety in my own account.