Ficino remains of the same opinion as Plato and Galen: in the act of seeing, the "internal fire" is externalized through the eyes, mixed with the pneumatic vapor and even with the thin blood that engendered it. That theory is confirmed by Aristotle himself, who relates that menstruating women who look at themselves in the mirror leave little drops of blood on its surface. This can only mean that it is the thin blood brought to the eyes along with the pneuma.
Ioan Couliano "Eros and Magic in the Renaissance" (1987) p29
So the stuff (spirit, pneuma) of the eyebeams is generated in the heart, where blood is hottest and thinnest, and in a menstruating woman - who is up over the gunwales in blood - especially, this blood is carried along the eyebeams to anything the gaze rests on.
On first reading I found this suddenly depressing. The menstruating woman meme is not I suppose new with Aristotle, is here cited by Ficino in the late 1400s and presumably lurks around for another couple hundred years or so.
Over 2,000 years and nobody bothered to plonk a menstruating woman in front of a mirror and check the results, not even for a lark.
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