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

10. This argument, accordingly, 0 son, deduces that all things are full of energies.

For though it needs must be that energies should be in bodies, — and there be many bodies in the Cosmos, — I say that energies are many more than bodies.

For often in one body there is [found] one, and a second and a third [activity], — not counting in the general ones that come with it.

By general ones I mean the purely corporal ones, that exercise themselves through the sensations l and the motions [of the body].

For that without these energies the body [of an animal] can not persist.

11. The souls of men, however, have a second class of energies, — the special ones [that exercise themselves] through arts, and sciences, and practices, and [purposed] doings.2

For that the feelings 3 follow on the energies or rather are completions * of the energies.

Know, then, 0 son, the difference of energy and of sensation.

[Thus] energy is sent down from above; whereas sensation, being in the body and having its existence from it, receives the energy

1 Or feelings. * Ivtpywtru^—cf. § 1 above.

3 Or sensations and makes it manifest, as though it did embody it.

Wherefore I say sensations are both corporal and mortal, and last as long as doth the body [only].

Nay, rather, its sensations are born together with the body, and they die with it.

12. But the immortal bodies in themselves have no sensation, — [not even an] immortal [one], as though they were composed out of some essence of some kind.

For that sensation doth arise entirely from naught else than either from the bad or else the good that's added to the body, or that is, on the contrary, taken [from it] again.

But with eternal bodies there is no adding to nor taking from.

Wherefore, sensation doth not occur in them.

13. Tat. Is, then, sensation felt in every body?

Her. In every body, son ; and energies are active in all [bodies, too].

Tat. Even in bodies without souls, 0 father
[mine] ?

Her. Even in them, 0 son. There are, however, differences in the sensations.

The feelings of the rationals occur with reason ; those of irrationals are simply corporal ; as for the things that have no soul, they [also] have sensations, but passive ones, — experience of increase [only] and decrease.1

Moreover, passion and sensation depend from one [same] head,2 and they are gathered up again into the same, and that, too, by the energies.

14. Of lives3 with souls there are two other energies which go with the sensations and the passions, — grief and joy.

And without these, an ensouled life, and most of all a rational one, could not experience sensation.

Wherefore, I say that there are forms of passions, — [and] forms that dominate the rational lives more [than the rest].

The energies, then, are the active forces [in sensations], while the sensations are the indications of the energies.

1 5. Further, as these 4 are corporal, they're set in motion by the irrational parts of [a man's] soul ; wherefore, I say that both of them are mischievous.

For that both joy, though [for the moment] it provides sensation joined with pleasure, immediately becomes a cause of many ills5 to

1 Of. § 8 above, and note.

2 £*•& fj.ias Kopv<f>T)s 1jpT7)VTai. Compare this with Plato, Phcedo, i. 60 B, where Socrates speaks of the pleasant and the painful as " two (bodies) hanging from one head " (tic mas

3 Or animals.

4 That is, the sensation of pleasure and pain.
6 Sc. by contrast.

him who feeleth it ; while grief [itself] provides [still] greater pains and suffering.

Wherefore, they both would seem [most] mischievous.

16. Tat. Can, then, sensation be the same in soul and body, father [mine] ?

Her. How dost thou mean, — sensation in the soul, [my] son ?

Tat. Surely it cannot be that soul's incorporal, and that sensation is a body, father, — sensation which is sometimes in a body and sometimes not, [just as the soul] ?

Her. If we should put it in a body, son, we should [then] represent it as like the soul or [like] the energies. For that we say these l are incorporals in bodies.

But [as] sensation's neither energy nor soul, nor any other thing than body, according to what has been said above, it cannot, therefore, be incorporal.

And if it's not incorporal, it must be body.

For of existing things some must be bodies and the rest incorporal.

COMMENT

Again, as with the last excerpt, the earlier editions of Stobseus have Asclepius and Tat as the persons of 1 That is, soul and energies.

the dialogue instead of Hermes and Tat. Wachsmuth gives them correctly.