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

For every body needeth being ; it needeth also ordered life2 as well.

For that for every thing that comes to birth,3 change also must succeed.4

For that which doth become,5 becomes in size ; for in becoming it hath increase.

1 Or of saving itself.

2 fwf/y TT?S lv Ta£ei Kfifievris, — lit. life set, or placed, in order (as distinguished from intellectual life), that is, presumably, sensible or ccsmic life.

3 Or has becoming, or genesis 4 Or follow.
6 Or is born.

Again, for every thing that doth increase, decrease succeedeth ; and on increase destruction.

For, sharing in the form of life,1 it 2 lives ; it shares, also, in being through the Soul.

2. But that which is the cause of being to another, is being first itself.

And by [this] " being " I now mean becoming in reason, and taking part in intellectual life.

It is the Soul that doth supply this intellectual life.

It is called living3 through the life, and rational through the intellect, and mortal through the body.

Soul is, accordingly, a thing incorporal, possessing [in itself] the power of freedom from all change.

For how would it be possible to talk about an intellectual living thing,4 if that there were no [living] essence to furnish life?

Nor, any more, would it be possible to say a rational [living] thing, were there no ratiocinative essence to furnish intellectual life.

3. It is not to all [lives] that intellect extends ; [it doth depend] on the relationship of body's composition to the Harmony.

fays, — that is, formal life, or life set in order.

2 Sc. body, or that which comes to birth.

3 &ov (subs.) according to Gaisford,— that is, an animal ; but I prefer fr6v (adj.), taking it with the following \oyticbr and

4 Or animal.

For if the hot in the compost be in excess, he's light l and fervid ; but if the cold, he's heavy and he's dull.

For Nature makes the composition fit the
Harmony.

There are three forms of the becoming, — the hot, the cold, and medium.

It 2 makes it fit according to the ruling Star 3 in the star-mixture.

And Soul receiving it,4 as Fate decrees, supplies this work of Nature with [the proper kind of] life.

Nature, accordingly, assimilates the body's harmony unto the mixture of the Stars, and counites its complex mixtures with their Harmony, so that they are in mutual sympathy.

For that the end of the Stars' Harmony is to give birth to sympathy according to their Fate.

1 Koixpos (mas.), — the subject is, therefore, man, the rational animal.

2 Sc. Nature. 3 Or, presumably, planetary sphere.
4 Sc. the body-compost.

EXCERPT XVII.

[OF SOUL, IV.]

(Patrizzi (p. 41) runs this on to the preceding without a break.

Text : Stob., Phys., xli. 4, under heading : " Of the Same "
—that is, " Of Hermes " ; G. pp. 324, 325 ; M. i. 228,
229 ; W. i. 321, 322.

Menard, Livre IV., No. vi. of " Fragments of the Book of Hermes to Ammon," pp. 265, 266.)

1. SOUL, Ammon, then, is essence containing its own end within itself ; in [its] beginning taking to itself the way of life allotted it by Fate, it draws also unto itself a reason like to matter, possessing " heart " and " appetite." *

" Heart," too, is matter ; if it doth make its state accordant with the Soul's intelligence, it, [then,] becometh courage, and is not led away by cowardice.

And " appetite " is matter, too ; if it doth make its state accord with the Soul's rational power, it [then] becometh temperance, and is not

1 In a metaphorical sense, — Qvphv ical firi6v/j.ia • terms originally belonging to a primitive stage of culture, and often translated "anger and concupiscence" — positive and negative, denoting the " too much " and the " too little " of the animal nature, and to he paralleled with the vovs and ewfcom of the rational nature. Cf. Ex. i. 5 and xviii. 3.

moved by pleasure, for reasoning fills up the "appetite's" deficiency.

2. And when both [these] 1 are harmonized, and equalized, and both are made subordinate to the Soul's rational power, justice is born.

For that their state of equilibrium doth take away the " heart's " excess, and equalizes the deficiency of " appetite."

The source of these,2 however, is the penetrating essence of all thought,3 its self by its own self, [working] in its own reason that doth think round everything,4 with its own reason as its rule.5

It is the essence that doth lead and guide as ruler ; its reason is as 'twere its counsellor who thinks about all things.6