{"collection":"Gnosticism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/gno/th3/th302.htm","path":"gno/th3/th302.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/gno/th3/th302.htm","text":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 3, by G.R.S. Mead, [1906]\n(Title from Patrizzi (p. 4); preceded by \u201cOf Thrice-greatest Hermes.\u201d\nText: Stob\u00e6us, Phys., xxxv. 1, under heading: \u201cOf Hermes\u2014from the [Book] to Tat\u201d; G. pp. 273-278; M. i. 190-194; W. i. 273-278. 1\nM\u00e9nard, Livre IV., No. i. of \u201cFragments from the Books of Hermes to his Son Tat,\u201d pp. 225-230.)\n1. 2 Her. Both for the sake of love to man, and piety 3 to God, I [now], my son, for the first time take pen in hand. 4\nFor there can be no piety more righteous than to know the things that are, and to give thanks for these to Him who made them,\u2014which I will never cease to do.\n2. Tat. By doing what, O father, then, if naught be true down here, may one live wisely?\nHer. Be pious, 1 son! Who pious is, doth reach the height of [all] philosophy 2; without philosophy the height of piety cannot be scaled.\nBut he who learns what are existent things, and how they have been ordered, and by whom, and for whose sake,\u2014he will give thanks for all unto the Demiurge, as unto a good sire, a nurse [most] excellent, a steward who doth never break his trust. 3\n3. Who giveth thanks, he will be pious; and he who pious is, will [get to] know both where is Truth, and what it is.\nAnd as he learns, he will more and more pious grow.\nFor never, son, can an embodied soul that has once leaped aloft, so as to get a hold upon the truly Good and True, slip back again into the contrary.\nFor when the soul [once] knows the Author of its Peace, 4 \u2019tis filled with wondrous love, 5 and\nwith forgetfulness 1 of every ill, and can no more keep from the Good.\n4. Let this be, O [my] son, the goal of piety;\u2014to which if thou attain, thou shalt both nobly live, and happily depart from life, for that thy soul no longer will be ignorant of whither it should wing its flight again.\nThis is the only [Way], my son,\u2014the Path [that leads] to Truth, [the Path] on which our forebears, 2 too, did set their feet, and, setting them, did find the Good. 3\nSolemn and smooth this Path, yet difficult to tread for soul while still in body.\n5. For first it hath to fight against itself, and make a great dissension, and manage that the victory should rest with the one part [of its own self].\nFor that there is a contest of the one against the two, 4\u2014the former trying to flee, the latter dragging down.\nAnd there\u2019s great strife and battle [dire] of these with one another,\u2014the one desiring to escape, the others striving to detain.\n6. The victory, moreover, of the one or of the others 1 is not resemblant.\nFor that the one doth hasten [upwards] to the Good, the others settle [downwards] to the bad.\nThe one longs to be freed; the others love their slavery.\nIf [now] the two be vanquished, they remain deprived of their own selves and of their ruler 2; but if the one be worsted, \u2019tis harried by the two, and driven about, being tortured by the life down here.\nThis 3 is, [my] son, the one who leadeth thee upon the Thither 4 Path.\nThou must, [my] son, first leave behind thy body, 5 before the end [of it 6 is reached], and come out victor in the life of conflict, and thus as victor wend thy way towards home.\n7. And now, [my] son, I will go through the things that are by heads 7; for thou wilt understand the things that will be said, if thou remember what thy ears have heard.\nAll things that are, are [then] in motion; alone the that which is not, is exempt from it.\nEvery body is in a state of change; [but] all bodies are not dissolvable; some bodies [only] are dissolvable.\nNot every animal is mortal; not every animal, immortal.\nThat which can be dissolved, can [also] be destroyed; the permanent [is] the unchangeable; the that which doth not change, [is] the eternal.\nWhat doth become 1 for ever, for ever also is destroyed 2; what once for all becomes, is never more destroyed, nor does it [ever more] become some other thing.\n8. First God; second the Cosmos; third [is] man. 3\nThe Cosmos, for man\u2019s sake; and man, for God\u2019s.\nThe soul\u2019s irrational part 4 is mortal; its rational part, immortal.\nAll essence [is] immortal; all essence, free from change.\nAll that exists 5 [is] twofold; naught of existing things remains.\nNot all are moved by soul; the soul moves all that doth exist. 6\n9. All that suffereth [is] sensible; not all that\u2019s sensible, doth suffer.\nAll that feels pain, doth also have experience of pleasure,\u2014a mortal life 1; not all that doth experience pleasure, feeleth [also] pain,\u2014a life immortal.\nNot every body\u2019s subject to disease; all bodies subject to disease are subject [too] to dissolution.\n10. The mind\u2019s in God; the reasoning faculty\u2019s 2 in man.\nThe reason\u2019s in the mind; the mind\u2019s above all suffering.\nNothing in body\u2019s true 3; all in the bodiless is free from what\u2019s untrue.\nAll that becomes, [is] subject unto change; not all that doth become, need be dissolved.\nNaught[\u2019s] good upon the earth; naught[\u2019s] bad in heaven.\n11. God[\u2019s] good; [and] man [is] bad. 4\nGood [is] free-willed; bad is against the will.\nThe gods do choose what things are good, as good; . . .\nThe good law of the mighty [One] 5 is the good law; good law\u2019s the law.\nTime\u2019s for the gods; the law for men. 1\nBad is the stuff that feeds the world; time is the thing that brings man to an end.\n12. All in the heaven is free from change; all on the earth is subject unto it.\nNaught in the heaven\u2019s a slave; naught on the earth is free.\nNothing can not be known in heaven; naught can be known on earth.\nThe things on earth do not consort with things in heaven. 2\nAll things in heaven are free from blame; all on the earth are blameworthy.\nThe immortal is not mortal; the mortal, not immortal.\nThat which is sown, is not invariably brought forth; but that which is brought forth, must have invariably been sown.\n13. [Now] for a body that can be dissolved, [there are] two \u201ctimes\u201d:\u2014[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\nThings subject unto dissolution wax and wane.\nThe matter that\u2019s dissolved, doth undergo two\ncontrary transformings:\u2014death and birth; but everlasting [matter], doth change either to its own self, or into things like to itself.\nThe birth of man [is] the beginning of his dissolution; man\u2019s dissolution the beginning of his birth.\nThat which departs, 1 [returns; and what returns] departs [again]. 2\n14. Of things existent, some are in bodies, some in forms, and some [are] in activities. 3\nBody[\u2019s] in forms; and form and energy in body.\nThe deathless shares not in the mortal [part]; the mortal shares in the immortal.\nThe mortal body doth not mount 4 into the deathless one; the deathless one descends 5 into the mortal frame.\nActivities do not ascend, but they descend.\n15. The things on earth bestow no benefit on things in heaven; the things in heaven shower every benefit on things on earth.\nOf bodies everlasting heaven is the container; of those corruptible, the earth.\nEarth [is] irrational; the heaven [is] rational.\nThe things in heaven [are] under it; the things on earth above the earth.\nHeaven[\u2019s] the first element; earth[\u2019s] the last element.\nFore-knowledge 1 [is] God\u2019s Order; Necessity[\u2019s] handmaiden to Fore-knowledge.\nFortune[\u2019s] 2 the course of the disorderly,\u2014the image of activity, 3 untrue opinion.\nWhat, [then] is God? The Good that naught can change.\nWhat, man? The bad that can be changed. 4\n16. If thou rememberest these heads, 5 thou wilt remember also what I have already set forth for thee with greater wealth of words. For these are summaries 6 of those.\nAvoid, 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. 7\nFor that the like\u2019s acceptable unto the like; the unlike\u2019s never friend to the unlike.\nSuch words as these have very very few to give them ear; nay, probably, they will not even have the few. 8\nThey have, moreover, some [strange force]\npeculiar unto themselves; for they provoke the evil all the more to bad.\nWherefore thou shouldst protect the many [from themselves], for they ignore the power of what\u2019s been said.\n17. Tat. What meanest thou, O father?\nHer. 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.\nNow 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,\u2014in 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.\nWherefore, care should be taken of them, in order that being [left] in ignorance, they may become less bad through fear of the unknown.\nPatrizzi 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\u2014an unaccountable\nmistake, in which he has been followed by all the editors of Stob\u00e6us except Wachsmuth.\nIn the introduction the treatise purports to be a letter written to Tat,\u2014a new departure, for it is \u201cfor the first time\u201d; on the other hand the form of the treatise is the usual one of oral instruction, of question and answer (\u00a7 2). Nevertheless in \u00a7 16 we learn that the definitions given in \u00a7\u00a7 7-15 are intended as heads or summaries of previous sermons.\nBut 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. H., xvi., \u201cthe summing up and digest, as it were, of all the rest\u2019\u2019 of the Sermons of Asclepius to the King, under the traditional title, \u201cThe Definitions of Asclepius.\u201d 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 \u201cThe Key\u201d itself was one of, or rather the continuation of, the Expository Sermons. 1\nThe warning to use great discretion in communicating the instruction to the \u201cmany,\u201d 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 \u201cThe [? Expository] Sermons to Tat\u201d; the title, however, is the invention of Patrizzi, and not original.\n3:1 G. = Gaisford (T.), Joannis Stob\u00e6i Florilegium (Oxford, 1822), 4 vols.; Io. Stob. Ec. Phys. et Ethic. Libri Duo (Oxford, 1850), 2 vols.\nM. = Meineke (A.), Joh. Stob. Flor. (Leipzig, 1855, 1856), 3 vols.; Joh. Stob. Ec. Phys. et Ethic. Lib. Duo (Leipzig, 1860), 2 vols.\nW. = Wachsmuth (C.), Io. Stob. Anthologii Lib. Duo Priores . . . Ec. Phys. et Ethic. (Berlin, 1884), 2 vols.\nH. = Hense (O.), I. Stob. Anth. Lib. Tert. (Berlin, 1894), 1 vol., incomplete.\n3:2 I have numbered the paragraphs in all the excerpts for convenience of reference.\n3:3 \u03b5\u1f50\u03c3\u03b5\u03b2\u03b5\u03af\u03b1\u03c2,\u2014it might also be rendered by worship.\n3:4 \u03c4\u03cc\u03b4\u03b5 \u03c3\u03c5\u03bb\u03bb\u03c1\u03ac\u03c6\u03c9.\n4:1 Or give worship unto God,\u2014\u03b5\u1f50\u03c3\u03ad\u03b2\u03b5\u03b9.\n4:2 In its true sense of wisdom-loving.\n4:3 \u1f10\u03c0\u03b9\u03c4\u03c1\u03cc\u03c0\u1ff3 \u03c0\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u1ff7.\n4:4 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 3, Comment.\n4:5 Cf. P. S. A., ix. 1; xii. 3.\n5:1 Where \u03bb\u03ae\u03b8\u03b7 (forgetfulness) is opposed to \u1f14\u03c1\u03c9\u03c2 (love),\u2014that is to say, reminiscence, the secret of the \u03bc\u03ac\u03b8\u03b7\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2 (math\u0113sis) of the Pythagoreans, the knowledge of the Author of our being or of our \u201crace\u201d within,\u2014\u03c8\u03c5\u03c7\u1f74 \u03bc\u03b1\u03b8\u03bf\u1fe6\u03c3\u03b1 \u1f11\u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 \u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u03c0\u03c1\u03bf\u03c0\u03ac\u03c4\u03bf\u03c1\u03b1 (cf. Ex. iii. 6).\n5:2 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 5; P. S. A., xi. 4; xxxvii. 3; Lact., D. I., i. 11.\n5:3 Cf. C. H., xi. (xii.) 21.\n5:4 The \u201cone\u201d is the rational element (\u03c4\u1f78 \u03bb\u03bf\u03b3\u03b9\u03ba\u03cc\u03bd) and the \u201ctwo\u201d are the passional (\u03c4\u1f78 \u03b8\u03c5\u03bc\u03b9\u03ba\u03cc\u03bd) and desiderative (\u03c4\u1f78 \u1f10\u03c0\u03b9\u03b8\u03c5\u03bc\u03b7\u03c4\u03b9\u03ba\u03cc\u03bd) elements of the irrational nature (\u03c4\u1f78 \u1f04\u03bb\u03bf\u03b3\u03bf\u03bd, or \u03c4\u1f78 \u03b1\u1f30\u03c3\u03b8\u03b7\u03c4\u1f78\u03bd as below), the \u201cheart\u201d and the \u201cappetite.\u201d Cf. Ex. xvii.; see also \u201cOrphic Psychology\u201d in my Orpheus (London, 1896), pp. 273-275.\n6:1 Lit. of the two.\n6:2 That is, the one.\n6:3 Sc. the one.\n6:4 \u1f10\u03ba\u03b5\u1fd6\u03c3\u03b5\u2014that is, to the Good and True, or God.\n6:5 Cf. Ex. ix. 12.\n6:6 Sc. the Path.\n6:7 Or summarily; cf. \u00a7 16 below.\n7:1 Or is born.\n7:2 Or dies.\n7:3 \u03c0\u03c1\u1ff6\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u1f41 \u03b8\u03b5\u1f78\u03c2, \u03b4\u03b5\u03cd\u03c4\u03b5\u03c1\u03bf\u03bd \u1f41 \u03ba\u03cc\u03c3\u03bc\u03bf\u03c2, \u03c4\u03c1\u03af\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u1f41 \u1f04\u03bd\u03b8\u03c1\u03c9\u03c0\u03bf\u03c2. Cf. P. S. A., x.: \u201cThe Lord of the Eternity (\u00c6on) is the first God; second is Cosmos; man\u2019s the third.\u201d\n7:4 Lit. sensible part,\u2014\u03c4\u1f78 \u03b1\u1f30\u03c3\u03b8\u03b7\u03c4\u03cc\u03bd.\n7:5 \u03c0\u1fb6\u03bd \u03c4\u1f78 \u1f44\u03bd,\u2014as opposed to \u03bf\u1f50\u03c3\u03af\u03b1. (essence).\n7:6 The meaning of ex-istence, being the coming out of pure being into the state of becoming.\n8:1 Or animal; perhaps this and the following interjection are glosses.\n8:2 \u1f41 \u03bb\u03bf\u03b3\u03b9\u03c3\u03bc\u03cc\u03c2,\u2014perhaps a mistake for \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2, as Patrizzi has it.\n8:3 Or real.\n8:4 But see \u00a7 15 below; and cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 12.\n8:5 The text is faulty; as is also apparently that of the following sentence. None of the conjectures yet put forward are satisfactory.\n9:1 Or time is divine, the law is man\u2019s.\n9:2 I have not adopted W.\u2019s lengthy emendations.\n9:3 This is the idea of sempiternity\u2014of things which have a beginning but no end.\n10:1 Or dies.\n10:2 There is a lacuna in the text.\n10:3 Or energies.\n10:4 Lit. go.\n10:5 Lit. comes.\n11:1 Or Providence. Cf. P. S. A., xxxix. 2; \u00a7 17 below; and Ex. xi. 1.\n11:2 \u03c4\u03cd\u03c7\u03b7.\n11:3 Or energy.\n11:4 Reading \u03c4\u03c1\u03b5\u03c0\u03c4\u1f78\u03bd for the hopeless \u1f04\u03c4\u03c1\u03b5\u03c0\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd of the text. Cf. 11 above.\n11:5 Cf. \u00a7 7 above.\n11:6 \u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u03b9\u03bf\u03c7\u03b1\u03af.\n11:7 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 13 and 22.\n11:8 Cf. P. S. A., xxii. 1.\n12:1 Or Providence; cf. \u00a7 15 above.\n12:2 Lit. than itself.\n13:1 Cf. R. (p. 128), who calls them a \u201cCollection of Sayings of Hermes.\u201d","title":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 3: I. Excerpts by Stob\u00e6us: Excerpt I. Of Piety and True Philosophy","type":"page"}