Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. III — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
Not every body's subject to disease ; all bodies subject to disease are subject [too] to dissolution.
10. The mind's in God ; the reasoning faculty's2 in man.
The reason's in the mind ; the mind's above all suffering.
Nothing in body's true 3 ; all in the bodiless is free from what's untrue.
All that becomes, [is] subject unto change ; not all that doth become, need be dissolved.
Naught['s] good upon the earth ; naught['s] bad in heaven.
11. God['s] good ; [and] man [is] bad.4
Good [is] free-willed ; bad is against the will.
The gods do choose what things are good, as
good; . . .
The good law of the mighty [One]5 is the good law ; good law's the law.
1 Or animal ; perhaps this and the following interjection are glosses.
2 & \oyurn6s,— perhaps a mistake for \6yos, as Patrizzi has it.
3 Or real.
4 But see § 15 below ; and c/. C. H.t x. (xi.) 12.
6 The text is faulty ; as is also apparently that of the following sentence. None of the conjectures yet put forward are satisfactory.
OF PIETY AND TRUE PHILOSOPHY
Time's for the gods ; the law for men.1
Bad is the stuff that feeds the world ; time is
the thing that brings man to an end.
12. All in the heaven is free from change; all on the earth is subject unto it.
Naught in the heaven's a slave ; naught on the earth is free.
Nothing can not be known in heaven ; naught can be known on earth.
The things on earth do not consort with things in heaven.2
All things in heaven are free from blame ; all on the earth are blameworthy.
The immortal is not mortal ; the mortal, not immortal.
That which is sown, is not invariably brought forth ; but that which is brought forth, must have invariably been sown.
13. [Now] for a body that can be dissolved, [there are] two "times": — [the period] from its sowing till its birth, and from its birth until its death ; but for an everlasting body, the time from birth alone.3
Things subject unto dissolution wax and wane.
The matter that's dissolved, doth undergo two contrary transformings : — death and birth ; but everlasting [matter], doth change either to its own self, or into things like to itself.
1 Or time is divine, the law is man's.
2 I have not adopted W.'s lengthy emendations.
3 This is the idea of sempiternity — of things which have a beginning but no end.
The birth of man [is] the beginning of his dissolution; man's dissolution the beginning of his birth.
That which departs,1 [returns; and what returns] departs [again].2
14. Of things existent, some are in bodies, some in forms, and some [are] in activities.3
Body['s] in forms; and form and energy in body.
The deathless shares not in the mortal [part] ; the mortal shares in the immortal.
The mortal body doth not mount4 into the deathless one ; the deathless one descends 5 into the mortal frame.
Activities do not ascend, but they descend.
15. The things on earth bestow no benefit on things in heaven ; the things in heaven shower every benefit on things on earth.
Of bodies everlasting heaven is the container ; of those corruptible, the earth.
Earth [is] irrational ; the heaven [is] rational.
The things in heaven [are] under it ; the things on earth above the earth.
1 Or dies. 2 There is a lacuna in the text.
3 Or energies. 4 Lit. go.
6 Lit. comes.
Heaven['s] the first element ; earth ['s] the last element.
Fore- knowledge 1 [is] God's Order ; Necessity^] handmaiden to Fore-knowledge.
Fortune[7s]2 the course of the disorderly, — the image of activity,3 untrue opinion.
What, [then] is God ? The Good that naught can change.
What, man ? The bad that can be changed.4
16. If thou rememberest these heads,6 thou wilt remember also what I have already set forth for thee with greater wealth of words. For these are summaries 6 of those.
Avoid, however, converse with the many [on these things] ; not that I would that thou shouldst keep them selfishly unto thyself, but rather that thou shouldst not seem ridiculous unto the multitude.*
For that the like's acceptable unto the like ; the un like's never friend to the unlike.
Such words as these have very very few to give them ear; nay, probably, they will not even have the few.8
They have, moreover, some [strange force]
1 Or Providence. Cf. P. S. A., xxxix. 2 ; § 17 below ; and Ex. xi. 1.
2 rvx-n. 3 Or energy.
4 Reading rptirrbv for the hopeless Hrptirrov of the text. Cf.
§ 11 above.
6 Cf. § 7 above. 6 vcpioxat.
7 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 13 and 22. 8 Of. P. S. A., xxii. 1.
peculiar unto themselves ; for they provoke the evil all the more to bad.