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And they must be gladded with instruments of music, and somedeal be occupied. Among all the passions and evils of the wits of feeling, blindness is most wretched. For without any bond, blindness is a prison to the blind. And blindness beguileth the virtue imaginative in knowing; for in deeming of white the blind deem it is black, and ayenward. It letteth the virtue of avisement in deeming.

And as one saith, he hath the voice of a fiend, head of a serpent, pace of a thief. For he hath an horrible voice. And therefore by smelling he savoureth carrions that be far from him, that is beyond the sea, and ayenward. Therefore the vulture followeth the host that he may feed himself with carrions of men and of horses. And they know that such a battle shall be, by some privy wit of kind.

Every reader of Shakespeare or Chaucer becomes familiar with the vital, animal, and natural spirits. They were supposed to communicate with all parts of the body by means of the arteries or wosen, "the nimble spirits in their arteries," and the sinews or nerves. The word sinew, by the way, is exactly equal to our word nerve, and ayenward, as our author would say.

There is another lake in which in that thou throwest rods of hazel, it turneth those rods into ash: and ayenward if ye cast ashen rods therein, they turn into hazel. Therein be places in which dead carrions never rot: but abide there always uncorrupt. Also in Ireland is a little island, in which men die not, but when they be overcome with age, they be borne out of that island to die without.