Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

1 Hilgers (B. J.), De Hermetis Trismegisti Poimandro Commentatio (Bonn, 1855), suggested by the appearance of Parthey's text in 1854.

2 Mobler (J. A.), Patrologie, pp. 950-951 — a brief note on
Hermes. Ed. by F. X. Reithmayr (Regensberg, 1840).

doctrines of the Christ, but of the so-called Neoplatonists, and among these especially of Philo Judaeus " ; in fact he seems, says Hilgers, to have been a Therapeut.1

THE GERMAN THEORY OF NEOPLATONIC " SYNCRETISMUS "

Here we have the first appearance of another tendency ; the more attention is bestowed upon the Trismegistic writings, the more it is apparent that they cannot be ascribed to Neoplatonism, if, as generally held, Neoplatonism begins with Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, and Porphyry in the third century. Therefore, in this subject, and in this subject alone, we find a tendency in later writers to push back the Neoplatonists so as to include Philo Judacus, who flourished in the first half of the first century ! On these lines we should soon get JVgo-platonism back to Plato and Pythagoras, and so be forced to drop the " Neo " and return to the old honoured name of simple " Platonici."

But already by this time in Germany the theory of Neoplatonic Syncretismus to prop up sinking Heathendom against rising Christianity had become crystallised, as may be seen from the article on "Hermes, Hermetische Schriften" in Pauly's famous Real Encyclopddie der classischen Alterthumswissenshaft (Stuttgart, 1844), where this position is assumed from the start.

Parthey, however, in 1854, in his preface, ventures on no such opinion, but expresses a belief that we may even yet discover in Egypt a demotic text of the " Pcemandres," which shows that he considered the original to have been written in Egyptian, and therefore not by a Neoplatonist.

1 Op. tit., pp. 16-17.

THE FRENCH THEORY OF EGYPTIAN ORIGIN

In France, moreover, the Egyptian paternity of the Trismegistic writings, and that too on very sensible lines, was asserted about the same time, namely, in 1858, by Artaud in his article on "Hermes Trisme'- giste," in Hoeffer's Nouvelle Biographic Gfdndrale, published at Paris by Messrs Firmin Didot. Artaud writes :

" In the mystic sense Thoth or the Egyptian Hermes was the symbol of the Divine Mind ; he was the incarnated Thought, the living Word — the primitive type of the Logos of Plato and the Word of the Christians. . . .

" We have heard Champollion, the younger, giving expression to the formal opinion that the books of Hermes Trismegistus really contained the ancient Egyptian doctrine of which traces can be discovered from the hieroglyphics which cover the monuments of Egypt. Moreover, if these fragments themselves are examined, we find in them a theology sufficiently in accord with the doctrines set forth by Plato in his Timceus — doctrines which are entirely apart from those of the other schools of Greece, and which were therefore held to have been derived by Plato from the temples of Egypt, when he went thither to hold converse with its priests." l

Artaud is also of the opinion that these Trismegistic treatises are translations from the Egyptian.

THE VIEWS OF M^NARD

Nowadays, with our improved knowledge of Egyptology, this hypothesis has to be stated in far more

1 The whole of this article has been lifted, without acknowledgment, by M'Clintock and Strong in their Cyclopcedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literaiwre (New York, 1872).

careful terms before it can find acceptance among the learned ; nevertheless it was evidently the conviction of Deveria, who in a work of which he only succeeded in writing the first two pages, proposed to comment on the entire text of the Trismegistic Books from the point of view of an Egyptologist. For these Books, he declared, offered an almost complete exposition of the esoteric philosophy of ancient Egypt.1

But by far the most sympathetic and really intelligent account of the subject is that of Menard,2 who gives us a pleasant respite from the chorus of the German Neoplatonic syncretism theory. And though we do not by any means agree with all that he writes, it will be a relief to let in a breath of fresh air upon the general stuffiness of our present summary of opinions.