Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the desire: this is also vanity and vexation of spirit.
Better is what the eyes actually see than the roaming of craving, for the present reality before sight is to be preferred to desire that wanders beyond it. The verse takes up the problem of wandering thoughts, when the mind loses its settled order and drifts away from a sound and steady train of thinking. Such unsettled straying of the mind is the mark of humanity's moral sickness since the fall, a disorder that has deepened over time into something ever more disastrous and fatal.
Better is what the eyes actually see than the roaming of craving, for the present reality before sight is to be preferred to desire that wanders beyond it. The verse takes up the problem of wandering thoughts, when the mind loses its settled order and drifts away from a sound and steady train of thinking. Such unsettled straying of the mind is the mark of humanity's moral sickness since the fall, a disorder that has deepened over time into something ever more disastrous and fatal.