Gone too from the world, Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing in their mocking mirrors the obscure soul of the world, a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend.
—Do you understand now? Can you work the second for yourself?
—Yes, sir.
Episode 2. Around ten in the morning. Stephen is working as a teacher at a private school. At this moment he is checking a pupil’s arithmetic homework. What we have here is one of Stephen’s philosophical reveries interwoven with his exchange with the student.
Averroes (1126–1198) was an Arab philosopher and physician born in Córdoba in medieval Spain. The name is the Latinized form of Ibn Rushd. He is known above all for his enormous body of commentaries on Aristotle.
Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) was a Jewish theologian, philosopher, and physician, born likewise in Córdoba and a near contemporary of Averroes. He attempted to provide Judaism with a rational foundation by way of Aristotelian philosophy.
Stephen is looking at the figures in the homework, and perhaps, because mathematics developed in the Arabic world and influenced European mathematics, the names of the Arab Averroes and his contemporary Maimonides come into his mind.
Because Stephen was educated in Jesuit schools, he is steeped in Aristotelian philosophy and in the theology of Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274). Averroes and Maimonides occupy, so to speak, an intermediate position linking Aristotle to Aquinas.
“Soul of the world” is the world soul. That is the idea that the universe as a whole is a living being possessed of a single soul, and that this soul is a kind of universal principle pervading the cosmos.
The world soul is a concept derived from Plato and later taken up by Neoplatonism, and both Averroes and Maimonides were under its influence. On the other hand, it does not sit easily with Aristotelian doctrine or with the theology of Aquinas. Since Stephen is a student of Aristotle and Aquinas, he presumably regards the world soul as something rather dubious.
I am not quite sure what “mocking mirrors” means.
Pressed onward, perhaps, by Moses Maimonides, and by the alliteration of men, mien, movement, Joyce may simply have arrived at mocking mirrors by sound-association. Mock means “to imitate in derision” or “to mimic in order to ridicule.” Perhaps what is meant is something like the curved mirrors found at amusement parks, which reflect the body in a distorted form.
The phrase appears once again in Episode 15.
The hours of noon follow in amber gold. Laughing, linked, high haircombs flashing, they catch the sun in mocking mirrors, lifting their arms.
（U470.4058）
“a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend” is an inversion of a verse from the Gospel of John (1:5).
And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
On this day Stephen thinks through similar imagery several times.
A little earlier than the present passage:
Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with faintly beating feelers: and in my mind’s darkness a sloth of the underworld, reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds. Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms. Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms.
（U21.73-）
Episode 3. Stephen’s thoughts by the seashore:
His shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending. Why not endless till the farthest star? Darkly they are there behind this light, darkness shining in the brightness, delta of Cassiopeia, worlds.
（U40.410）
Episode 10. Stephen’s thoughts in front of the jeweller’s shop. Here the image is not inverted, but it is closely related:
Born all in the dark wormy earth, cold specks of fire, evil, lights shining in the darkness. Where fallen archangels flung the stars of their brows. Muddy swinesnouts, hands, root and root, gripe and wrest them.
（U198.806）
Averroes and Maimonides also make several further appearances in the novel.
Episode 16. At the maternity hospital, Stephen introduces theories about the cause of pregnancy:
Then spake young Stephen … peradventure in her bath according to the opinions of Averroes and Moses Maimonides.
（U319.247）
Episode 15. In the hallucination scene, in the list of historical personages imitated by Mr. Bloom, whose father was Jewish:
(Bloom … contracts his face so as to resemble many historical personages, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Byron, Wat Tyler, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, Moses Mendelssohn, Henry Irving, Rip van Winkle, Kossuth, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Baron Leopold Rothschild, Robinson Crusoe, Sherlock Holmes, Pasteur, …)
（U404.1846）
Episode 17. As one of the great figures in history named by Mr. Bloom:
Three seekers of the pure truth, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, author of More Nebukim (Guide of the Perplexed) and Moses Mendelssohn of such eminence that from Moses (of Egypt) to Moses (Mendelssohn) there arose none like Moses (Maimonides).
（U563.711）
Averroes as painted by Raphael in The School of Athens
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Averroes_closeup.jpg
(Postscript)
I learned that medieval Western painting includes a recurring subject called The Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas. In most versions, Thomas stands in the center, flanked by Aristotle and Plato. At his feet lies Averroes, as if trampled underfoot.
This is said to represent Thomas’s theological refutation of Averroes. Stephen’s view of Averroes may perhaps have its roots in just such a relationship.
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