Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. II (the Corpus Hermeticum) — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
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This wretched soul, not knowing what she is, becomes the slave of bodies of strange form in sorry plight, bearing the body as a load ; not as the ruler, but the ruled. This [ignorance] is the soul's vice.
9. But on the other hand the virtue of the soul is Gnosis. For he who knows, he good and pious is, and still while on the earth 3 divine.
Tat. But who is such an one, 0 father mine ?
Her. He who doth not say much or lend his ear to much. For he who spendeth time in arguing and hearing arguments, doth shadow-
1 &v KCIK)) fJiflvp.
2 Cf. G. H., xii. (xiii.) 3 : " The great ill of the soul is Godlessness " ; also below § 20 : " What greater chastisement of any human soul can there be, son, than lack of piety 1 "
3 Lit. already.
fight. For "God, the Father and the Good," is not to be obtained by speech or hearing.
And yet though this is so, there are in all the beings senses, in that they cannot without senses be.
But Gnosis is far different from sense. For sense is brought about by that which hath the mastery o'er us, while Gnosis is the end of science,1 and science is God's gift.
10. All science is incorporal, the instrument it uses being the mind, just as the mind employs the body.
Both then come into bodies, [I mean] both things that are cognizable by mind alone and things material.2 For all things must consist out of antithesis and contrariety ; and this can otherwise not be.
Tat. Who then is this material God of whom thou speakest ?
Her. Cosmos is beautiful, but is not good 3— for that it is material and freely passible 4 ; and though it is the first of all things passible, yet is it in the second rank of being and wanting in itself.
And though it never hath itself its birth in time, but ever is, yet is its being in becoming,
1 eirurT'fi/j.ns. 2 Or hylic.
3 But cf. P. 8. A., xxvii. 1.
4 That is capable of suffering, or impressionable by agencies other than itself.
becoming for all time the genesis of qualities and quantities ; for it is mobile and all material motion's genesis.1
11. It is intelligible2 rest that moves material motion in this way,3 since Cosmos is a sphere — that is to say, a head. And naught of head above's material, as naught of feet below's intelligible,4 but all material.
And head itself moved in a sphere-like way — that is to say, as head should move,5 is mind.
All then that are united to the "tissue" of this " head " (in which 6 is soul) are in their nature free from death, — just as when body hath been made in soul, are things that have more soul than body.
Whereas those things which are at greater distance from this " tissue " — there, where are things which have a greater share of body than of soul — are by their nature subject unto death.
The whole, however, is a life ; so that the universe consists of both the hylic and of the intelligible.7
12. Again, the Cosmos is the first of living things, while man is second after it, though first of things subject to death.
1 Genesis and becoming are both yevevts in Greek.
2 Noetic as opposed to hylic — the antithesis and contrariety mentioned above.
3 Namely the ever-becoming of genesis.
4 Or mental, in the sense of being of the same nature as the mind.
5 K€(pa\iK&s. 6 In which " tissue."
7 §§ 12, 13 are quoted by Stobaeus, Phys., I. xxxix. 9 (G. i. 307 ; W. 350, 13 ff.).
Man hath the same ensouling power in him as all the rest of living things l ; yet is he not only not good, but even evil,2 for that he's subject unto death.3
For though the Cosmos also is not good in that it suffers motion, it is not evil, in that it is not subject unto death. But man, in that he's subject both to motion and to death, is evil.4
13. Now then the principles5 of man are thiswise vehicled : mind in the reason (logos), the reason in the soul, soul in the spirit,6 [and] spirit in the body.
Spirit pervading [body]7 by means of veins and arteries and blood, bestows upon the living creature motion, and as it were doth bear it in a way.
For this cause some do think the soul is blood, in that they do mistake its nature, not knowing that [at death] it is the spirit that must first
1 That is to say, the world-system itself and all the globes in it.
2 Cf. Ex. i. 11 and 15.
3 Whereas the system and its globes are regarded as practically immortal.
4 Reitzenstein (p. 40, 1) gives a revised text of the major part of this utterance of Hermes, from " Cosmos is beautiful " onwards, but unfortunately he omits just the most obscure sentences in it.