Clarity and shining

Meaning

Clear, bright and shining qualify the great universal sea-water in the account of preliminary purification. Its radiance is praised as surpassing gold, silver and the gleam of precious stones. These adjectives belong to a particular rhetorical contrast: the matter begins under a dark, thick-looking shadow, while the water by which its hidden inward part becomes accessible is described as luminous and lovely. The English preserves several adjectives rather than treating them as a precise optical measurement. Their presence does not independently identify a substance, nor does brilliance by itself supply the ordered signs required elsewhere in the work.