But there are arguments on the other side. About mirrors there are 1 two opinions; some people think that only phantoms are seen in them; in other words, the shape of our bodies, an emanation separated from our bodies. Others, however, affirm that images do not exist in the mirror, but that it is the very bodies that are seen, the eyesight being bent back and reflected on itself again. Now, the point is not how do we see whatever it is we see: the question is, how the image should resemble the original in the cloud as in a mirror.[28] Could anything be more 2 unlike than the sun and a rainbow in which neither the colour nor the shape nor the size of the sun is to be seen? A bow is far larger and, in the bright part, far redder than the sun: in the other colours, too, it is different from him. Besides, when you insist on comparing a mirror to the atmosphere (_i.e._ as embodied in a cloud), you must show me in the latter the same smoothness of texture, the same levelness of surface, the same brightness as in the former. But surely no clouds resemble mirrors to this extent. We often pass through the middle of clouds without seeing ourselves in them. People who climb to the tops of mountains look down on cloud, but cannot make out their reflection 3 in it. True enough, but it is separate drops that are separate mirrors, says my opponent. Admitted. Still, I deny that a cloud consists of fully formed drops. It no doubt contains the elements from which the drops are formed, but not as drops. Clouds do not contain even water, but only the material to form water. Granting, for the sake of argument, that there _are_ countless drops in the clouds and that they can reflect an object, yet they do not all produce one and the same reflection, but each its own. Further, you may join mirrors to one another, but they will not unite to form a single reflection: 4 each portion will enclose a likeness of the object. Some mirrors are composed of a large number of very small parts. Set before them one man and a whole people is reflected, each portion producing an image of its own. The portions of the mirror thus united and placed side by side none the less keep their images separate, and out of one man make a crowd. But they do not blend in one that troop; 5 they separate and distinguish the individual faces. Now, a rainbow is bounded by a single outline, the whole presents but one representation. [28] The reading of the MSS. is admittedly corrupt. I have followed Ruhkopf’s conjecture, though without conviction. The argument seems to require _dissimilis_ = unlike, or _non similis_ (cf. c. v. 13), instead of _similis_ = like (“resemble” in the text): in that case the meaning would be: how an image unlike the original ought to be reflected from the cloud as from a mirror. Cf. § 13 below.