“She who sings to a lyre is Wantonness (_Luxuria_), and she chants melodies like these to her parasites: ‘Thou art in thy youth; now is the time to sport with the girls--old age will do to reform in. Here is one with a fine figure; this one is rich; from this one you would gain much. There is plenty of time to save your soul.’ In such way she melts the hearts of the wanton till Cocytus’s waves engulf them suddenly tripped by death. “They have the faces of women, because nothing so estranges man from God as the love of women. They have wings of birds, because the desire of worldlings is always unstable, their appetites now craving one thing, and again their lust flying to another object. They have also the talons of birds, because they tear their victims as they snatch them away to the torments of hell. Ulysses is called Wise. Unharmed he steers his course by the island, because the truly wise Christian swims over the sea of this world, in the ship of the Church. By the fear of God he binds himself to the mast of the ship, that is, to the cross of Christ; with wax, that is with the incarnation of Christ, he seals the ears of his comrades, that they may turn their hearts from lusts and vices and yearn only for heavenly things. The Syrens are submerged, because he is protected from their lusts by the strength of the Spirit. Unharmed the voyagers avoid the peril, inasmuch as through victory they reach the joys of the saints.”[59] CHAPTER XXVIII THE RATIONALE OF THE VISIBLE WORLD: HUGO OF ST. VICTOR Just as the Middle Ages followed the allegorical interpretation of Scripture elaborated by the Church Fathers, so they also accepted, and even made more precise, the patristic inculcation of the efficacy of such most potent symbols as the water of baptism and the bread and wine transubstantiated in the Eucharist.[60] Passing onward from these mighty bases of conviction, the mediaeval genius made fertile use of allegory in the polemics of Church and State, and exalted the symbolical principle into an ultimate explanation of the visible universe.