As for the robes, those of Isis1 are variegated in
their colours ; for her power is concerned with matter
which becomes everything and receives everything,
light and darkness, day and night, fire and water, life
and death, beginning and end. But the robe of
Osiris has no shading or variety in its colour, but only
one single colour like to light. For the beginning
is combined with nothing else, and that which is
primary and conceptual is without admixture ; wherefore, when they have once taken off the robe of Osiris,
they lay it away and guard it, unseen and untouched.
But the robes of Isis they use many times over; for in
use those things that are perceptible and ready at hand
afford many disclosures of themselves and opportunities to view them as they are changed about in
various ways. But the apperception of the conceptual, the pure, and the simple, shining through the
soul like a flash of lightning, affords an opportunity to
touch and see it but once.2 For this reason Plato3 and
Aristotle call this part of philosophy the epoptic4 or
[p. 183]
mystic part, inasmuch as those who have passed
beyond these conjectural and confused matters of all
sorts by means of Reason proceed by leaps and bounds
to that primary, simple, and immaterial principle ;
and when they have somehow attained contact with
the pure truth abiding about it, they think that they
have the whole of philosophy completely, as it were,
within their grasp.