A Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries

"which, becoming blind both here and in Hades, he converses with nothing but shadows." In the same manner, one who is captivated by beautiful bodies, and does not depart from their embrace, will sink—not with his body, but with his soul—into depths dark and unpleasing to the intellect, where, remaining blind in Hades, he lives here and there among shadows.

And what further confirms our exposition is that matter was considered by the Egyptians as a certain mire or mud. "The Egyptians," says Simplicius in his commentary on Aristotle's Physics (p. 50), "called matter—which they symbolically denominated 'water'—the dregs or sediment of the first life; matter being, as it were, a certain mire or mud." Original: "Διο κὴ Αιγυπτιοι την της πρωτης ζωης, ην υδωρ συμβολικως εκαλουν, υποσαθμην την υλην ελεγον, οιον ιλυν 7ινα ουσαν." So that from all that has been said, we may safely conclude with Ficinus Marsilio Ficino, a 15th-century philosopher., whose words are as express to our purpose as