Ways of Seeing

Seeing comes before speech. The child learns to recognize things by looking before he starts speaking.
However, in another sense, seeing comes before words. We find our place in the world around us by seeing. We describe this world with words, but words can never change the fact that we are surrounded by the world. Every evening we see the sun set.
We know that the world is turning its back on the sun. However, this knowledge, this explanation, never fits what we see. The surrealist painter Magritte interpreted this ever-present gap between words and objects in his painting "The Key to Dreams."