[61] This Eve or sense from the very moment of coming into being through each of her parts as through orifices poured multitudinous light into the Mind, and purging and dispersing the mist set it as it were in the place of a master, able to see in luminous clearness the natures of things bodily.
[62] And the Mind, like one enlightened by the flash of the sun’s beam, after night, or as one awakened from deep sleep, or like a blind man who has suddenly received his sight, found thronging on it all things which come into being, heaven, earth, air, water, the vegetable and animal world, their phases, qualities, faculties, dispositions whether temporary or permanent, movements, activities, functions, changes, extinctions. Some it saw, some it heard, some it tasted, some it smelt, and some it touched; and to some it was attracted, because they work pleasure, from others it was averse because they cause pain.
[63] So then it gazed around on every side and, beholding itself and its powers, feared not to utter the same boast as the Macedonian king Alexander. For the story is that, when he seemed to have gained the mastery of Europe and Asia, he stood in some commanding spot and, looking at the view around, said “this way and that all are mine.” The words showed the lightness of an immature and childish soul, the soul of a common man in truth and not of a king.
[64] But before Alexander’s day the Mind, having acquired the faculty of sense and through its agency laid hold of every form of bodily things, was filled and puffed up with unreasoning pride, and thus thought that all things were its own possessions and none belonged to any other.