Mirror

Use in the book

At 132e Alcibiades proposes mirrors and things like them as objects in which one can see both the object and oneself. Socrates then asks whether the eye itself contains something of that sort. The move takes an ordinary artificial mirror as the starting example and transfers its reflective function to the eye opposite.

The main analogy narrows attention to the region in which the eye's virtue, sight, occurs. Soul must likewise look into soul, especially its wisdom. At this stage the text does not yet call god a mirror. It says the best knowing region of soul resembles the god and that attending to the divine permits self-knowledge.

The four supplied speeches at 133c8–17 then compare ordinary mirrors with the mirror in the eye: the former are clearer, purer, and brighter. God similarly exceeds the best region in the human soul. Looking into god would therefore be using him as the finest mirror, with soul's virtue the relevant object among human things. The optical comparison thus acquires a hierarchy in which the divine offers a better reflective standard.

These textual stages must be distinguished. The ordinary mirror and eye reflection belong to the transmitted argument; the explicit divine mirror is printed by Burnet in angle brackets from Eusebius. One may discuss the supplied passage as part of this edition's reading text while acknowledging its disputed authenticity. Removing it would remove that explicit comparison, not every mention of god or every relation between the divine and self-knowledge.

The metaphor also has a limit. A literal mirror returns an appearance; the philosophical use aims at knowledge of the person's authoritative and excellent activity. The dialogue relies on the analogy to direct attention, not to explain a physical reflection of an incorporeal soul.

Places to read

1. 132d–133aOrdinary mirrors lead to the reflecting region of another eye
2. 133b–133c6Soul’s knowing region and its divine likeness extend the analogy without yet naming god a mirror
3. 133c8–17The supplied speeches explicitly compare god to the finest mirror
4. 133c8–17 (apparatus)Burnet supplies the passage from Eusebius; B and T omit it

Translation in this edition

Both κάτοπτρον and ἔνοπτρον are rendered “mirror.” The extra lemma is marked as a lemma rather than falsely presented as a nominative attestation. At 133c13 “using him as the finest mirror” conveys the instrumental dative and should not be flattened into an unqualified naming formula.

ἔνοπτρον

Attested: ἐνόπτρῳ (enoptrōi; 133c). At 133c: A mirror used for reflection; in the supplied lines god would be used as the finest one. Lexical identification: lemma: ἔνοπτρον. This attestation at 133c belongs to the Eusebius passage supplied by Burnet in angle brackets, not to the text preserved in B and T. See Mirror.

κάτοπτρον

Attested: κατόπτρῳ (katoptrōi; 133a). At 133a: A reflecting surface used as the comparison for the image appearing in another eye. Lexical identification: lemma: κάτοπτρον. See Mirror.

σαφής

Attested: σαφέστερα (saphestera; 133c). At 133c: Clearer: ordinary mirrors are compared favorably with the eye's mirror in the supplied passage. Lexical identification: lemma: σαφής. This attestation at 133c belongs to the Eusebius passage supplied by Burnet in angle brackets, not to the text preserved in B and T. See Mirror.

Use in the book

The account attributed to Thales describes an eclipse observed by means of a mirror. Another passage compares a cloud producing a mock sun to a smooth bronze mirror. Reflection is a means of observation in the first case and part of the proposed explanation of an appearance in the second.

Places to read

1. I.25.3bThe compressed account is interpreted as observing an eclipse by reflection.
2. I.30.2.8A smooth bronze mirror illustrates the reflecting cloud.

Translation in this edition

“Mirror” is direct for the noun; “by reflection” may suit the corresponding adverb.

Use in the book

Memory is a mirror whose backing consists in tenacious, material signs: without them, the image would pass through and escape. Curved or colored minds are then likened to mirrors that alter forms or colors, even when they represent what they receive. The possibility of combining embellishment with accuracy keeps the judgment from being a simple demand for mechanical copying.

The soul differs from an ordinary mirror because it can look within and reflect upon itself. This limit to the analogy matters. Calling something a mirror is not enough to decide whether it knows, remembers, distorts, or simply receives what it shows.

Places to read

1. I, p. 280, entry 5, ¶1Memory needs the material backing of signs.
2. II, p. 616, entry 10, ¶1Curved and colored mirrors model transformations in reception.
3. II, p. 904, entry begun p. 903, no. 11, ¶5The soul can inspect itself where the mirror cannot.

Translation in this edition

The English translation renders taim as backing and étamé as tinned, retaining the craft image. The memory passage remains incomplete after etc.; the lexicon does not fill the absent object.

Use in the book

The soul can contain a world without taking its bodily size, as a small mirror holds a large prospect. IV.84 then develops reflection into agency: the beams originate in the sun but genuinely flow from the mirror in which the sun appears. Received divine love similarly becomes a real outpouring of the person who receives it.

The next complication is freedom. Human mirrors have lids. Ignorance or inconsideration can interpose and interrupt their shining, so reception does not mechanically ensure return. The image holds together dependence and responsibility: one cannot manufacture the original light, but one can refuse it or fail to communicate it. The world itself is also a mirror whose beauty remains unseen without attention.

Places to read

1. I.31The world mirrors infinite beauty that habitual blindness overlooks.
2. IV.84A mirror returning sunlight models the soul’s real communication of received love.
3. IV.86Mirrors with lids express the freedom to interrupt or communicate the light.

In this edition

Mirror is not a theory of wholly passive mind. The added lids and the claim that love truly proceeds from the soul explicitly complicate mechanical reflection.

Use in the book

In March 1833 the soul is called a divine mirror. Nature's meaning, intimate language, and beauty would be clearly retraced there if the neglected inward sense were active. The mirror does not simply duplicate what the earthly eyes already possess. It allows a perceived form to appear in its relation to eternal beauty and God. Its value therefore depends on both receptive clarity and spiritual interpretation.

The December 1834 painting passage returns to the figure from another direction. A shepherd on a mountain can represent intelligence amid creation: an echo at the center of melodies and a divine mirror along the route of God's moving symbols. The universe is already communicating; the human being receives and resonates with it.

But the paragraph ends by reducing the grand representation to ordinary scale. The real shepherd and narrator are poor creatures watching clouds and listening to wind for the pleasure of solitude. This does not simply cancel the mirror's dignity. It exposes a difference between the symbolic office an artwork gives a person and the unassuming activity through which that office might be enacted. The mirror belongs to a poetics of reception that remains conscious of its own elevated language.

Places to read

1. 15 March 1833 · ¶1The specular faculty discloses meaning and divine participation beyond exterior forms.
2. 10 December 1834 · ¶5The shepherd's image joins mirror and echo, then contrasts their symbolic dignity with ordinary looking and listening.

Translation in this edition

“Faculté spéculaire” becomes “power of reflection” in the supplied English. Because “reflection” can also mean deliberate thinking, the French makes the optical metaphor more explicit than that English phrase alone.

Use in the book

Aëtius reports that outflows come together at the mirror's surface and are compacted by fiery material emitted from the mirror. The latter also carries along the air in front, into which the streams travel. Reflection is thus explained through emissions, surface gathering, compaction, and movement of surrounding air.

The sentence is highly compressed. It gives a material sequence but does not explicitly provide a geometry of incidence and reflection, a viewer's position, or a full account of how the compacted result becomes visible. Aristotle's reference to an eye seeing itself as in reflection at A91 occurs in a different argument about visual fire. The two passages should not be welded into a detailed optical apparatus they do not describe. The present entry concerns the physical location and operation assigned to the mirror in Aëtius's notice.

Places to read

1. A 88 (testimony)Aëtius. Describes surface accumulation and fiery compaction of effluences.
2. A 91 (polemical)Aristotle, On Sense and Sense-Objects. Uses reflection in an argument distinct from Aëtius’s mirror mechanism.

Translation in this edition

The edition's explanatory prose speaks of “glass” and a “film.” Neither material nor that technical description appears explicitly in the ancient sentence; both should be recognized as interpretive additions.