The Asclepius declares that "man is a mighty wonder", an animal "meet for our worship and for our respect." Earlier in this volume a sermon to the same Asclepius finds only the name of Good in men and rebukes those who call man beautiful and good. Over a similar clash about the cosmos, Mead concludes that rival Hermetic schools quarrelled. Here, though, the praise carries a condition. Man thinks little of his human part out of "confidence in the divineness of [his] other" part, and "a man looks down" on what he shares with Earth. The sermon on the Good condemns man as the body holds him; the Asclepius praises him for what he can set aside. They differ in tone more than in doctrine.
Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. II (the Corpus Hermeticum) — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
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1. [III. M.] It is for reasons such as these,
Asclepius, man is a mighty wonder, — an animal
meet for our worship and for our respect.
1 A suggestion of man's attraction to the various species of the animal nature.
For he doth pass into God's Nature,1 as though himself were God. This genus [also] knows the genus of the daimons, as though man knew he had a [common] origin with them. He thinketh little of the part of human nature in him, from confidence in the divineness of [his] other part.
How much more happy is the blend of human nature [than of all the rest] ! Joined to the Gods by his cognate divinity, a man looks down upon the part of him by means of which he's common with the Earth.
The rest of things to which he knows he's kin, by [reason of] the heavenly order [in him], he binds unto himself with bonds of love ; and thus he turns his gaze to Heaven.
2. So, then, [man] hath his place in the more blessed station of the Midst ; so that he loves [all] those below himself, and in his turn is loved by those above.
He tills the Earth. He mingles with the
Elements by reason of the swiftness of his mind.
He plunges into the Sea's depths by means of
its2 profundity. He puts his values on all
things.
Heaven seems not too high for him ; for it is measured by the wisdom of his mind as though it were quite near.
1 This contradicts somewhat the more careful wording of G. If., x. (xi.) 1, where the term Energy is preferred.
2 Sc. the mind's.
No darkness of the Air obstructs the penetration of his mind. No density of Earth impedes his work. No depth of Water blunts his sight. J
[Though still] the same [yet] is he all, and everywhere is he the same.
3. Of all these genera, those [species] which are animal have [many] roots, which stretch from the above below,2 whereas those which are stationary 3 — these from [one] living root send forth a wood of branching greenery up from below into the upper parts.
Moreover, some of them are nourished with a two-fold form of food, while others with a single form.
Twain are the forms of food — for soul and body, of which [all] animals consist. Their soul is nourished by the ever-restless motion of the World4; their bodies have their growth from foods [drawn] from the water and the earth of the inferior world.1
1 Of. G. #., xi. (xii.) 19.
2 Compare with this the symbolism of the "fire-tree" and the " rootage " of the aeons, in the " Simonian " system of the Gnosis, taken by Hippolytus from the document entitled The Great Announcement (Hipp., Philos., vi. 9 and 18). Also the common figure of the Ashvattha tree of Indo- Aryan mythology ; for instance, in the Katfiopanishad, II. vi. 1 : "The old, old tree that sees no morrow's dawn, [stands] roots up, branches down" (see Mead and Chattopadhyaya's Upanishads, i. 74 — London ; 1896). Ashvatthah=a~shvah-tha, that is, " which stands not till to-morrow." The idea is that the world-tree (samsdravriksha) never lasts till to-morrow, for all things are perpetually changing.
3 Lit. non-animal. 4 Or Cosmos.
Spirit,2 with which they 3 all are filled, being interblended with the rest,4 doth make them live ; sense being added, and also reason in the case of man — which hath been given to man alone as a fifth part out of the aether.
Of all the living things5 [God] doth adorn, extend, exalt, the sense of man alone unto the understanding of the Keason of Divinity.6
But since I am impressed to speak concerning Sense, I will a little further on set forth for you the sermon on this [point] ; for that it is most holy, and [most] mighty, not less than in the Reason of Divinity itself.
VII
1. But now I'll finish for you what I have begun. For I was speaking at the start of union with the Gods, by which men only 7 consciously enjoy8 the Gods* regard, — I mean whatever men have won such rapture that they have obtained a share of that Divine Sense of intelligence which is the most1 Divine of Senses, found in God and in man's reason.
1 Of. xi. 2.
2 Gf. C. H., x. (xi.) 13, and Commentary thereon.
3 That is, animal bodies.
4 Presumably the rest of the Earth elements.
5 Lit. animals.
6 Lit. the Divine Reason, Ratio, or Logos.
7 Sc. of the animals. Gf. xviii. 1 below.
8 Per-fruuntur. Cf., for the idea, xxii. 1 below.
Asc. Are not the senses of all men, Thricegreatest one, the same ?