Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. III — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

Ishon, which literally means "little man " or " dwarf," 2 is in A.V. generally translated " apple of the eye." 3

Thus we read in a purely literal sense, referring to weeping : " Let not the apple of thine eye cease " (Lam. ii. 18).

It was, however, a common persuasion, that the intelligence or soul itself, not merely the reflection of the image of another person, resided in the eye, and was made manifest chiefly by the eye.

Thus the " apple of the eye " was used as a synonym for a man's most precious possession, the treasure-house as it were of the light of a man.

1 Compare, for instance, Kathopanishad, Sec. ii., Pt. ii., iv. 11, 12 :
" The Man, of the size of a thumb, resides in the midst, within

in the self, of the past and the future the lord ; from him a man hath no desire to hide. This verily is That.

" The Man, of the size of a thumb, like flame free from smoke, of past and of future the lord, the same is to-day, to-morrow the same will he be. This verily is That."— Mead and Chattopadhyaya's Trans. (London, 1896), i. 68, 69.

Here " to-day " and " to-morrow " are said by some to refer to different incarnations ; the " Man " (purusha) being the potential Self, destined finally to become, or grow into the stature of, the Great Self (Maha-purusha).

2 See the article, " Theosophic Light on Bible Shadows," in The
Theosophical Review (Nov. 1904), xxxv. 230, 231.

3 The minute image of a person reflected in the pupil of the eye of another may to some extent account for the popular belief underlying this identification.

And so we read: "He [Yahweh] kept him [Israel] as the apple of his eye " (Ps. xvii. 8) — where ishon is in the Hebrew further glossed as the " daughter of the eye " ; and again : " Thus saith the Lord of Hosts : . . . He that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye " (Zech. ii. 8).

The " apple of the eye " (ishon) was, then, something of great value, something very precious, and, therefore, we read in the Wisdom-literature that the punishment of the man who curses his father and mother is that " his lamp shall be put out in obscure (ishon) darkness " (Prov. xx. 20) — that is, that he shall thus extinguish the lamp of his intelligence, or perhaps spiritual nature, " in the apple of his eye there will be darkness " ; and this connects with a passage in the Psalms which shows traces of the same Wisdom-teaching. " In the hidden part l [of man] thou shalt make me to know wisdom " (Ps. li. 6).

But the most striking passages are to be found in that pre-eminently Wisdom-chapter in the Proverbscollection, where the true Israelite is warned to remain faithful to the Law (Torah), and to have no commerce with the " strange woman," the " harlot " — that is, the " false doctrines " of the Gentiles.2

"Keep my law as the apple of thine eye" (Prov. vii. 2), says the writer, speaking in the name of Yahweh, for he has seen the young and foolish being led astray by the " strange woman." " He went the way to her house, in the twilight, in the evening; in the black (ishon) and dark night " (Prov. vii. 9). That is to say,

1 The same idea which we found above in connection with
Ammon.

2 To go " a- whoring " after strange gods and strange doctrines was the graphic figure invariably employed by Hebrew orthodoxy ; " to commit fornication " not unf requently echoes the same idea in the New Testament.

his lamp was put out; there was dark night in his eye, in that little man of his, which should be his true lightspark understanding the wisdom of Yahweh.

Here, I think, we have additional evidence, that the idea, that the pupil of the eye was the seat of the spiritual intelligence in man, was widespread in Hellenistic circles.1 But even so, can we translate Koprj KOO-JULOV as the "Apple of the World-Eye"? It is true that Isis is the instrument or organ of conveying the hidden wisdom to Horus, and that it is eventually Hermes or the Logos who is the true light itself, which shines through her, the pupil of Egypt's eye,2 out of that mysterious darkness, in which she found herself, when she received illumination at the hands of Kamephis; but is this sufficient justification for rejecting the traditional translation of the title, and adopting a new version?