Thus he describes the attractive, cheerful, painless quality of her light. Further, the reason is given why men of dim and weak eyesight do not see any distinct figure in the moon; [Sidenote: D] her orb shines full and smooth to them, whereas strong-sighted persons get more details, and distinguish the features impressed there with clearer sense of contrast. Surely the reverse should happen if it were a weakness and affection of the eye which produced the image; the weaker the organ the clearer should be the appearance. The very irregularity of the surface is sufficient to refute this theory; this image is not one of continuous and confluent shadow, but is well sketched in the words of Agesianax: [Sidenote: E] _All round as fire she shines, but in her midst, Bluer than cyanus, lo, a maiden’s eye, Her tender brow, her face in counterpart._ For the shadowy parts really pass beneath the bright ones which they encircle, and in turn press and are cut off by them; thus light and shade are interwoven throughout, and the face-form [Sidenote: F] is delineated to the life. The argument was thought to meet your Clearchus also, Aristotle, no less unanswerably; for yours he is, and an intimate of your namesake of old, although he perverted many doctrines of the Path.’ III. Here Apollonides interposed to ask what the view of Clearchus was. ‘No man’, I said, ‘has less good right than you to ignorance of a doctrine which starts from geometry, [Sidenote: 921] as from its native hearth. Clearchus says that the face, as we call it, is made up of images of the great ocean mirrored in the moon. For our sight[304] being reflected back from many points, is able to touch objects which are not in its direct line; and the full moon is of all mirrors the most beautiful and the purest in uniformity and lustre. As then you geometers think that the rainbow is seen in the cloud when it has acquired a moist and smooth consistence, because our vision is reflected on to the sun,[305] so Clearchus held that the outer ocean is seen [Sidenote: B] in the moon, not where it really is, but in the place from which reflexion carried our sight into contact with it and its dazzle. Agesianax has another passage: _Or ocean’s wave that foams right opposite, Be mirrored like a sheet of fire and flame._’