  The above discussion is directly related to the way in which Judah’s envisages both psychology and prophecy. According to him, the five external senses divide into (1) those that are primarily material (materiali): touch (tatto), taste (gusto), and smell (odorato); and (2) those that are increasingly spiritual (spirituali): hearing (per l’audito) and sight (per   l’occhi).[31]   It seems that only the latter are able to penetrate behind the purely physical so as to abstract the spiritual from the corporeal. Hearing, intimately connected to the Renaissance ideal of rhetoric, consists of the ability to discern “fine speeches, excellent reasoning, beautiful verses, sweet music, and beautiful and harmonious  melodies.”[32]   Sight, ranked just above the faculty of hearing, owing to the primacy that Judah puts on vision, deals with “beautiful colors, regular patterns, and light in all its varied  splendor.”[33]   The senses, thus, function hierarchically as a prolegomenon to any form of higher knowledge, with the imagination forming the threshold (mezzo) between the senses and the intellect.