So it the fairer body doth procure
To habit in….
For of the soul the body form doth take,
For soul is form, and doth the body make.
This is the teaching also of St. Paul, that the body must be transformed by the renewing of the mind.
Here we perceive the source of the heavenly beauty and grace of Miranda. “The pure in heart shall see God.” Her thought and vision wrought out for her a bodily expression that made her seem celestial to the beholder, and held him in doubt whether she were goddess or mortal.
In esoteric thought the perfected being must be an equal blending of the masculine and feminine, which Balzac has so gloriously interpreted in his “Seraphita.” This quality we see in Prospero, the gentle, refined element of motherhood, blended with sublime dignity and strength. His child was to him “a cherubim infusing him with fortitude from heaven,” and he gave to her the richest dower of inheritance—knowledge, with purity of heart and purpose. With the gentle patience of love he instructed her in the laws of nature and her being, with divine purity of thought. For all nature is pure as God himself. Thus Miranda became the peerless young Eve of blended wisdom and innocence.
After a display of his power, he states, in his address to Ferdinand, the most abstruse problems of the ideal philosophy.
These … were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;