{"collection":"Gnosticism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/gno/th2/th225.htm","path":"gno/th2/th225.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/gno/th2/th225.htm","text":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 2, by G.R.S. Mead, [1906]\n(Text: P. 99-113; Pat. 23b-25b.)\n1. Hermes. The Mind, O Tat, is of God\u2019s very essence\u2014(if such a thing as essence of God 1 there be)\u2014and what that is, it and it only knows precisely.\nThe Mind, then, is not separated off from God\u2019s essentiality, but is united unto it, as light to sun.\nThis Mind in men is God, and for this cause some of mankind are gods, and their humanity is nigh unto divinity.\nFor the Good Daimon said: \u201cGods are immortal men, and men are mortal gods.\u201d\n2. But in irrational lives Mind is their nature. For where is Soul, there too is Mind; just as where Life, there is there also Soul.\nBut in irrational lives their soul is life devoid of mind 1; for Mind is the in-worker of the souls of men for good;\u2014He works on them for their own good.\nIn lives irrational He doth co-operate with each one\u2019s nature; but in the souls of men He counteracteth them.\nFor every soul, when it becomes embodied, is instantly depraved by pleasure and by pain.\nFor in a compound body, just like juices, pain and pleasure seethe, and into them the soul, on entering in, is plunged. 2\n3. O\u2019er whatsoever souls the Mind doth, then, preside, to these it showeth its own light, by acting counter to their prepossessions, just as a good physician doth upon the body prepossessed by sickness, pain inflict, burning or lancing it for sake of health.\nIn just the selfsame way the Mind inflicteth pain upon the soul, to rescue it from pleasure, whence comes its every ill.\nThe great ill of the soul is godlessness 3; then\nfolloweth fancy 1 for all evil things and nothing good.\nSo, then, Mind counteracting it doth work good on the soul, as the physician health upon the body.\n4. But whatsoever human souls have not the Mind as pilot, they share in the same fate as souls of lives irrational.\nFor [Mind] becomes co-worker with them, giving full play to the desires towards which [such souls] are borne,\u2014[desires] that from the rush of lust strain after the irrational; [so that such human souls,] just like irrational animals, cease not irrationally to rage and lust, nor ever are they satiate of ills.\nFor passions and irrational desires are ills exceeding great; and over these God hath set up the Mind to play the part of judge and executioner.\n5. Tat. In that case, father mine, the teaching (logos) as to Fate, 2 which previously thou didst explain to me, risks to be over-set.\nFor that if it be absolutely fated for a man to fornicate, or commit sacrilege, or do some other evil deed, why is he punished,\u2014when he hath done the deed from Fate\u2019s necessity?\nHer. All works, my son, are Fate\u2019s; and without Fate naught of things corporal\u2014or good, or ill\u2014can come to pass.\nBut it is fated too, that he who doeth ill, shall suffer. And for this cause he doth it\u2014that he may suffer what he suffereth, because he did it.\n6. But for the moment, [Tat,] let be the teaching (logos) as to vice and Fate, for we have spoken of these things in other [of our sermons]; but now our teaching (logos) is about the Mind:\u2014what Mind can do, and how it is [so] different,\u2014in men being such and such, and in irrational lives [so] changed; and [then] again that in irrational lives it is not of a beneficial nature, while that in men it quencheth out the wrathful and the lustful elements.\nOf men, again, we must class some as led by reason, and others as unreasoning.\n7. But all men are subject to Fate, and genesis and change, for these 1 are the beginning and the end of Fate.\nAnd though all men do suffer fated things, those led by reason (those whom we said the Mind doth guide) do not endure like suffering with the rest; but, since they\u2019ve freed themselves from viciousness, not being bad, they do not suffer bad.\nTat. How meanest thou again, my father? Is not the fornicator bad; the murderer bad; and [so with] all the rest?\nHer. [I meant not that;] but that the\n[paragraph continues] Mind-led man, my son, though not a fornicator, will suffer just as though he had committed fornication, and though he be no murderer, as though he had committed murder.\nThe quality of change he can no more escape than that of genesis.\nBut it is possible for one who hath the Mind, to free himself from vice.\n8. Wherefore I\u2019ve ever heard, my son, Good Daimon also say\u2014(and had He set it down in written words, He would have greatly helped the race of men; for He alone, my son, doth truly, as the First-born God, gazing upon all things, give voice to words (logoi) divine)\u2014yea, once I heard Him say:\n\u201cAll things are one, and most of all the bodies which the mind alone perceives. Our life is owing to [God\u2019s] Energy and Power and \u00c6on. His Mind is Good, so is His Soul as well. And this being so, intelligible things know naught of separation. So, then, Mind, being Ruler of all things, and being Soul of God, can do whate\u2019er it wills.\u201d\n9. So do thou understand, and carry back this word (logos) unto the question thou didst ask before,\u2014I mean about Mind\u2019s Fate.\nFor if thou dost with accuracy, son, eliminate [all] captious arguments (logoi), thou wilt discover that of very truth the Mind, the Soul\nof God, doth rule o\u2019er all\u2014o\u2019er Fate, and Law, and all things else; and nothing is impossible to it,\u2014neither o\u2019er Fate to set a human soul, 1 nor under Fate to set [a soul] neglectful of what comes to pass. Let this so far suffice from the Good Daimon\u2019s most good [words]. 2\nTat. Yea, [words] divinely spoken, father mine, truly and helpfully. But further still explain me this.\n10. Thou said\u2019st that Mind in lives irrational worked in them as [their] nature, co-working with their impulses.\nBut impulses of lives irrational, as I do think, are passions.\nNow if the Mind co-worketh with [these] impulses, and if the impulses of [lives] irrational be passions, then is Mind also passion, taking its colour from the passions.\nHer. Well put, my son! Thou questionest right nobly, and it is just that I as well should answer [nobly].\n11. All things incorporal when in a body are subject unto passion, and in the proper sense they are [themselves] all passions.\nFor every thing that moves [another] is incorporal; while every thing that\u2019s moved is body.\nIncorporals are further moved by Mind, and movement\u2019s passion.\nBoth, then, are subject unto passion\u2014both mover and the moved, the former being ruler and the latter ruled.\nBut when a man hath freed himself from body, then is he also freed from passion.\nBut, more precisely, son, naught is impassible, but all are passible.\nYet passion differeth from passibility; for that the one is active, while the other\u2019s passive.\nIncorporals 1 moreover act upon themselves, for either they are motionless 2 or they are moved; but whichsoe\u2019er it be, it\u2019s passion.\nBut bodies are invariably acted on, and therefore are they passible.\nDo not, then, let terms trouble thee; action and passion are both the selfsame thing. To use the fairer sounding term, however, does no harm.\n12. Tat. Most clearly hast thou, father mine, set forth the teaching (logos).\nHer. Consider this as well, my son; that these two things God hath bestowed on man beyond all mortal lives\u2014both mind and speech\n[paragraph continues] (logos) equal to immortality. He hath the mind for knowing God and uttered speech (logos) for eulogy of Him. 1\nAnd if one useth these for what he ought, he\u2019ll differ not a whit from the immortals. 2 Nay, rather, on departing from the body, he will be guided by the twain unto the Choir of Gods and Blessed Ones.\n13. Tat. Why, father mine!\u2014do not the other lives make use of speech (logos)?\nHer. Nay, son; but use of voice; speech is far different from voice. For speech is general among all men, while voice doth differ in each class of living thing.\nTat. But with men also, father mine, according to each race, speech differs.\nHer. Yea, son, but man is one; so also speech is one and is interpreted, and it is found the same in Egypt, and in Persia, and in Greece.\nThou seemest, son, to be in ignorance of Reason\u2019s (Logos) 3 worth and greatness. For that the Blessed God, Good Daimon, hath declared:\n\u201cSoul is in Body, Mind in Soul; but Reason (Logos) is in Mind, and Mind in God; and God is Father of [all] these.\u201d\n14. The Reason, then, is the Mind\u2019s image, and Mind God\u2019s [image]; while Body is [the image] of the Form; and Form [the image] of the Soul.\nThe subtlest part of Matter is, then, Air; of Air, Soul; of Soul, Mind; and of Mind, God. 1\nAnd God surroundeth all and permeateth all 2; while Mind surroundeth Soul, Soul Air, Air Matter.\nNecessity 3 and Providence and Nature are instruments of Cosmos and of Matter\u2019s ordering; while of intelligible things each is Essence, and Sameness is their Essence.\nBut of the Bodies 4 of the Cosmos each is many; for through possessing Sameness, [these] composed Bodies, though they do change from one into another of themselves, do natheless ever keep the incorruption of their Sameness.\n15. Whereas in all the rest of composed bodies, of each there is a certain number; for without number structure cannot be, or composition, or decomposition.\nNow it is units that give birth to number and increase it, and, being decomposed, are taken back again into themselves.\nMatter is one; and this whole Cosmos\u2014the mighty God and image of the mightier One, both with Him unified, and the conserver of the Will and Order of the Father\u2014is filled full of Life. 1\nNaught is there in it throughout the whole of \u00c6on, the Father\u2019s [everlasting] Re-establishment, 2\u2014nor of the whole, nor of its parts,\u2014which doth not live.\nFor not a single thing that\u2019s dead, hath been, or is, or shall be in [this] Cosmos.\nFor that the Father willed it should have Life as long as it should be. Wherefore it needs must be a God.\n16. How, then, O son, could there be in the God, the image of the Father, 3 in the plenitude 4 of Life\u2014dead things 5?\nFor that death is corruption, and corruption is destruction.\nHow then could any part of that which knoweth no corruption be corrupted, or any whit of him the God destroyed?\nTat. Do they not, then, my father, die\u2014the lives in it, that are its parts?\nHer. Hush, son!\u2014led into error by the term in use for what takes place.\nThey do not die, my son, but are dissolved as compound bodies.\nNow dissolution is not death, but dissolution of a compound; it is dissolved not so that it may be destroyed, but that it may become renewed.\nFor what is the activity of life? Is it not motion? What then in Cosmos is there that hath no motion? Naught is there, son!\n17. Tat. Doth not Earth even, father, seem to thee to have no motion?\nHer. Nay, son; but rather that she is the only thing which, though in very rapid motion, is also stable.\nFor how would it not be a thing to laugh at, that the Nurse of all should have no motion, when she engenders and brings forth all things?\nFor \u2019tis impossible that without motion one who doth engender, should do so.\nThat thou shouldst ask if the fourth part 1 is not inert, is most ridiculous; for that the body which doth have no motion, gives sign of nothing but inertia.\n18. Know, therefore, generally, my son, that all that is in Cosmos is being moved for decrease or for increase.\nNow that which is kept moving, also lives; but there is no necessity that that which lives, should be all same.\nFor being simultaneous, the Cosmos, as a whole, is not subject to change, my son, but all its parts are subject unto it; yet naught [of it] is subject to corruption, or destroyed.\nIt is the terms employed that confuse men. For \u2019tis not genesis that constituteth life, but \u2019tis sensation; it is not change that constituteth death, but \u2019tis forgetfulness.\nSince, then, these things are so, they are immortal all,\u2014Matter, [and] Life, [and] Spirit, Mind [and] Soul, of which whatever liveth, is composed.\n19. Whatever then doth live, oweth its immortality unto the Mind, and most of all doth man, he who is both recipient of God, and co-essential with Him.\nFor with this life alone doth God consort; by visions in the night, by tokens in the day, and by all things doth He foretell the future unto him,\u2014by birds, by inward parts, by wind, by tree.\nWherefore doth man lay claim to know things past, things present and to come.\n20. Observe this, too, my son; that each one of the other lives inhabiteth one portion of the Cosmos,\u2014aquatic creatures water, terrene earth, and aery creatures air; while man doth use all these,\u2014earth, water, air, [and] fire; he seeth heaven, too, and doth contact it with [his] sense.\nBut God surroundeth all, and permeateth all, 1 for He is energy and power; and it is nothing difficult, my son, to conceive God.\n21. But if thou wouldst Him also contemplate, behold the ordering of the Cosmos, and [see] the orderly behaviour of its ordering; behold thou the Necessity of things made manifest, and [see] the Providence of things become and things becoming; behold how Matter is all-full of Life; [behold] this so great God in movement, with all the good and noble [ones]\u2014gods, daimones and men!\nTat. But these are purely energies, O father mine!\nHer. If, then, they\u2019re purely energies, my son,\u2014by whom, then, are they energized except by God?\nOr art thou ignorant, that just as Heaven, Earth, Water, Air, are parts of Cosmos, in just the selfsame way God\u2019s parts are Life and Immortality, [and] Energy, and Spirit, and Necessity, and Providence, and Nature, Soul, and Mind, and the Duration 2 of all these that is called Good?\nAnd there is naught of things that have become, or are becoming, in which God is not.\n22. Tat. Is He in Matter, father, then?\nHer. Matter, my son, is separate from God,\nin order that thou may\u2019st attribute unto it the quality of space. But what thing else than mass 1 think\u2019st thou it is, if it\u2019s not energized? Whereas if it be energized, by whom is it made so? For energies, we said, are parts of God.\nBy whom are, then, all lives enlivened? By whom are things immortal made immortal? By whom changed things made changeable?\nAnd whether thou dost speak of Matter, or of Body, or of Essence, know that these too are energies of God; and that materiality is Matter\u2019s energy, that corporality is Bodies\u2019 energy, and that essentiality doth constitute the energy of Essence; and this is God\u2014the All.\n23. And in the All is naught that is not God. Wherefore nor size, nor space, nor quality, nor form, nor time, surroundeth God; for He is All, and All surroundeth all, and permeateth all.\nUnto this Reason (Logos), son, thy adoration and thy worship pay. There is one way alone to worship God; [it is] not to be bad. 2\n199:1 That is, if we can use such a term with respect to God.\n200:1 That is, of the mind manifested in man as distinguished from the general Mind.\n200:2 \u03b2\u03b1\u03c0\u03c4\u03af\u03b6\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9.\n200:3 \u1f00\u03b8\u03b5\u03cc\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2. Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 8, 9: \u201cAnd the soul\u2019s vice is ignorance\u201d; and \u00a7 20: \u201cWhat greater chastisement of any human soul, can there be, son, than lack of piety?\u201d The only way of salvation from the bonds of Fate is thus \u201cpiety\u201d or \u201cgodliness.\u201d See R. 102, 1, for references.\n201:1 \u03b4\u03cc\u03be\u03b1.\n201:2 Heimarmen\u0113.\n202:1 Sc. genesis and change.\n204:1 Cf. Lact., D. I., ii. 15.\n204:2 The critical text of this paragraph is given R. 78.\n205:1 Reading \u1f00\u03c3\u03ce\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1 for \u03c3\u03ce\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1.\n205:2 The words I have translated by \u201cact,\u201d \u201cactive\u201d and \u201caction,\u201d may be more literally rendered by \u201cenergize,\u201d \u201cenergic\u201d and \u201cenergy.\u201d The \u201cmotionless\u201d has \u201cenergy\u201d because it is the cause of motion to that which it moves.\n206:1 Following the emendation of R.\n206:2 The critical text of the above paragraphs is given R. 156, n. 6.\n206:3 It is impossible to bring out the word-play of the original in English; and so the double meaning is lost.\n207:1 This sentence is tagged on to the end of C. H., v. (vi.) by some scribe.\n207:2 Cf. \u00a7 20 below.\n207:3 Reading \u1f00\u03bd\u03ac\u03b3\u03ba\u03b7 for \u1f00\u03bd\u03ac\u03b3\u03ba\u1fc3; see \u00a7 21 below.\n207:4 Sc. the elements.\n208:1 Lit. a Pl\u0113r\u014dma of Life.\n208:2 \u1f00\u03c0\u03bf\u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03ac\u03c3\u03c4\u03b1\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2.\n208:3 Reading \u03c0\u03b1\u03c4\u03c1\u1f78\u03c2 for \u03c0\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u03cc\u03c2.\n208:4 Pl\u0113r\u014dma.\n208:5 A critical text of the last five paragraphs is given R. 25, n. 1.\n209:1 Sc. element.\n211:1 Cf. \u00a7 14 above.\n211:2 Sc. \u00c6on.\n212:1 Probably in the sense of \u201cquantity.\u201d\n212:2 Lactantius, D. I., vi. 25, translates the last two sentences into Latin, with the strange remark that Hermes so spake in treating \u201cAbout Justice.\u201d See the following Commentary on \u00a7 6, and Ex. xi.","title":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 2: I. Corpus Hermeticum: XII. (XIII.) About the Common Mind","type":"page"}