Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. II (the Corpus Hermeticum) — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

Tis holy, incorruptible, and everlasting, and if there can be any better attribute to give to it, ['tis its], — Eternity of God supreme, in Truth itself subsisting, the Fullness of all things, of Sense, and of the whole of Science, consisting, so to say, with God.2

2. The Cosmic Sense is the container3 of all sensibles, [all] species, and [all] sciences.

The human [higher sense consists] in the retentiveness of memory, in that it can recall all things that it hath done.

1 Cf. § 3 below.

2 Consistens^ ut ita dixerim, cum deo. Is there possibly here underlying the Latin consistens cum deo the expanded form of the peculiar and elliptical irpbs rbv Oebv of the Proem to the Fourth Gospel (the apud deum of the Vulgate) ? This was explained by the Gnostic Ptolemy, somewhere about the middle of the second century, as " at-one-ment with God," in his exegesis of the opening words, which he glosses as : " The at-one-ment with each other, together with their at-one-ment with the Father" (f) -jrpbs a\\-f}\ovs a/j-a Kal T] Trpbs •r'bv iraTcpa eVoxm). So that the first verse of the Proem would run : " In the Beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was (one) with God ; yea, the Logos was God. He was in the Beginning (one) with God" — ? consistens cum deo. See Irenaeus, Ref. Om. Hwr., I. viii. 5 — Stieren (Leipzig ; 1853), i. 102 ; also F. F. F., p. 388.

3 Or receptacle.

For only just as far as the man- animal has the divinity of Sense l descended ; in that God hath not willed the highest Sense divine should be commingled with the rest of animals ; lest it should blush for shame 2 on being mingled with the other lives.

For whatsoever be the quality, or the extent, of the intelligence of a man's Sense, the whole of it consists in power of recollecting what is past.

It is through his retentiveness of memory, that man's been made the ruler of the earth.

3. Now the intelligence of Nature 3 can be won by quality of Cosmic Sense, — from all the things in Cosmos which sense can perceive.

Concerning [this] Eternity, which is the second [one], — the Sense of this we get from out the senses' Cosmos, and we discern its quality [by the same means].

But the intelligence of Quality [itself], the "Whatness" of the Sense of God Supreme, is Truth alone, — of which [pure] Truth not even the most tenuous sketch, or [faintest] shade, in Cosmos is discerned.

For where is aught [of it] discerned by measurement of times, — wherein are seen untruths, and births [-and-deaths], and errors ?

1 That is, the divine or higher sense, connected with memory in its beginnings and with the Platonic "reminiscence" (the Pythagorean mathesis) in its maturity.

2 Gf. C. H.t x. (xi.) 19. 3 That is, Cosmos.

4. Thou seest, then, Asclepius, on what we are [already] founded, with what we occupy ourselves, and after what we dare to strive.

But unto Thee, 0 God most high, I give my thanks, in that Thou hast enlightened me with Light to see Divinity !

And ye, 0 Tat, Asclepius and Ammon, in silence hide the mysteries divine within the secret places of your hearts,1 and breathe no word of their concealment*!

5. Now in our case the intellect doth differ from the sense in this, — that by the mind's extension intellect can reach to the intelligence and the discernment of the quality of Cosmic Sense.

The Intellect of Cosmos, on the other hand,
extends to the Eternity and to the Gnosis of the
Gods who are above itself.3

And thus it comes to pass for men, that we perceive the things in Heaven, as it were through a mist, as far as the condition of the human sense allows.

'Tis true that the extension [of the mind] which we possess for the survey of such transcendent things, is very narrow [still] ; but [it will be] most ample when it shall perceive with the felicity of [true] self-consciousness.

1 Lit. breasts. 2 Of. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 22.

3 The super-cosmic Gods, or beings of the Intelligible Cosmos ; the ^Eons of the Gnostics.

XXXIII

1. [XII. M.] Now on the subject of a " Void," l —which seems to almost all a thing of vast importance, — I hold the following view.

Naught is, naught could have been, naught ever will be void.

For all the members of the Cosmos are completely full; so that Cosmos itself is full and [quite] complete with bodies, diverse in quality and form, possessing each its proper kind and size.