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

Wherefore thou shouldst protect the many [from themselves], for they ignore the power of what's been said.

17. Tat. What meanest thou, 0 father?

Her. This, [my] son ! All that in man is animal, is proner unto bad [than unto good] ; nay, it doth cohabit with it, because it is in love with it.

Now if this animal should learn that Cosmos is subject to genesis, and all things come and go according to Fore-knowledge 1 and by Necessity, Fate ruling all, — in no long time it would grow worse than it is now,2 [and] thinking scorn of the whole [universe] as being subject unto genesis, and unto Fate referring [all] the causes of the bad, would never cease from every evil deed.

Wherefore, care should be taken of them, in order that being [left] in ignorance, they may become less bad through fear of the unknown.

COMMENTARY

Patrizzi thought so highly of this excerpt that he chose it for Book I. of his collection. He, however, erroneously made the persons of the dialogue Asclepius and Tat, instead of Hermes and Tat — an unaccountable

1 Or Providence ; cf. § 15 above. 2 Lit. than itself.

mistake, in which he has been followed by all the editors of Stobaeus except Wachsmuth.

In the introduction the treatise purports to be a letter written to Tat, — a new departure, for it is " for the first time " ; on the other hand the form of the treatise is the usual one of oral instruction, of question and answer (§ 2). Nevertheless in § 16 we learn that the definitions given in §§ 7-15 are intended as heads or summaries of previous sermons.

But already in C. H., x. (xi.) 1, we have an abridgment or epitome (or rather a summation) of the General Sermons delivered to Tat, just as we have in C. IT., xvi., " the summing up and digest, as it were, of all the rest '' of the Sermons of Asclepius to the King, under the traditional title, "The Definitions of Asclepius." The headings in our sermon, then, may probably have been intended for the summary of the teaching of the Expository Sermons to Tat (see in Cyril, Frag. xv.). Some of our definitions, however, are strikingly similar to those in C. H., x. (xi.), but this may be accounted for by supposing that " The Key " itself was one of, or rather the continuation of, the Expository Sermons.1

The warning to use great discretion in communicating the instruction to the " many, " because of the danger of teaching the Gnosis to the morally unfit, seems to be an appropriate ending to the sermon; we may then be fairly confident that we have in the above a complete tractate of "The [? Expository] Sermons to Tat"; the title, however, is the invention of Patrizzi, and not original.

1 Cf. R. (p. 128), who calls them a " Collection of Sayings of
Hermes."

EXCEEPT II.

[OF THE INEFFABILITY OF GOD]

(I have added the title, the excerpt not being found in
Patrizzi.

Text: Stob., Flor., Ixxx. [Ixxviii.] 9, under the heading:
"Of Hermes from the [Book] to Tat"; G. iii. 135; M. iii.
104, 105.1

Menard, Livre IV., No. x. of "Fragments from the Books of Hermes to his Son Tat," p. 256.)

[Her.~\ To understand 2 God is difficult, to speak
[of Him] impossible.

For that the Bodiless can never be expressed in body, the Perfect never can be comprehended by that which is imperfect, and that 'tis difficult for the Eternal to company with the ephemeral.

The one is for ever, the other doth pass ; the one is in [the clarity of] Truth, the other in the shadow of appearance.

So far off from the stronger [is] the weaker,

1 Hense's text ends with xlii. 17 ; the second part has apparently never been published.

2 Or think of.

the ]esser from the greater [is so far], as [is] the mortal [far] from the Divine.

It is the distance, then, between the two that dims the Vision of the Beautiful.

For 'tis with eyes that bodies can be seen, with tongue that things seen can be spoken of; but That which hath no body, that is unmanifest, and figureless, and is not made objective [to us] out of matter, — cannot be comprehended by our sense.

I have it in my mind, 0 Tat, I have it in my mind, that what cannot be spoken of, is God.

COMMENTAEY

Justin Martyr quotes these opening words of our
excerpt verbatim, assigning them to Hermes (Cohort., 38 ;
Otto, ii. 122).1

The substance of the second sentence is given twice by Lactantius in Latin (Div. Institt., ii. 8 ; Ep. 4) ; in the second passage the Church Father also quotes verbatim the first sentence of our excerpt, and from his introductory words we learn that they were the beginning of a written sermon from Hermes to his son (Tat).