“Seeing is believing” is an oft repeated proverb or observation.
In his book Photography and Belief, David Levi Strauss relates how “the origin of the proverb… is lost in the mists of time… [But] the year this proverb was first printed in English is usually given as 1609, in an unpublished manuscript by S. Harward (now housed in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge), where it emerges as “Seeing is leeving.”
Strauss then explains how “Leeving is loving. The term comes from the indo-European root leubh, meaning ‘to love or desire’: the Anglo-Saxon leof, English lief, is ‘dear,’ ‘beloved.’”
In other words, “To believe is to hold dear. Believing is loving.”
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