cause a great part of it was absorbed in the earth without emerging from thence: for a river is the symbol of life, and consequently signifies in this place the nature of an intellectual life, proceeding from on high, that is, from divinity itself, and gliding with prolific energy through the occult and profound recesses of the soul.
But when, in the following lines, he says,
Nulli certa domus. Lucis habitamus opacis,
Riparumque toros, et prata recentia rivis
Incolimus.
By the blessed being confined to no particular habitation, the liberal condition of their existence is plainly implied; since they are entirely free from all material restraint, and purified from all inclination to the dark and cold tenement of body. The shady groves are symbols of the soul’s retiring to the depth of her essence, and there, by a divinely solitary energy, establishing herself in the ineffable principle of things. And the meadows are symbols of that prolific power of the gods through which all the variety of reasons, animals, and forms was produced, and which is here the refreshing pasture and retreat of the liberated soul.
But that the tradition of the principles from which the soul descended formed a part of the sacred mysteries is evident from Virgil; and that this was accompanied with a vision of these principles or gods, is no less certain, from the testimony of Plato, Apuleius, and Proclus. The first part of this assertion is evinced by the following beautiful lines:
Principio cœlum ac terras, camposque liquentes
Lucentemque globum lunæ, Titaniaque astra
Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus
Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet.
Inde hominum pecudumque genus, vitæque volantum,
Et quæ marmoreo fert monstra sub æquore pontus.
Igneus est ollis vigor, et cœlestis origo
Seminibus, quantum non noxia corpora tardant,
Terrenique hebetant artus, moribundaque membra.
Hinc metuunt cupiuntque: dolent, gaudentque: neque auras
Despiciunt clausæ tenebris et carcere cæco.
For the sources of the soul’s existence are also the principles from which it fell; and these, as we may learn from the Timæus of Plato, are Jupiter, or the Demiurgus, the mundane soul, and the
