{"collection":"Gnosticism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/gno/th3/th308.htm","path":"gno/th3/th308.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/gno/th3/th308.htm","text":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 3, by G.R.S. Mead, [1906]\n(Title (first half) from Patrizzi (p. 45b), followed by \u201cTo the Same Tat.\u201d\nText: Stob., Phys., xxxv. 8, under the curious heading: \u201cOf Hermes\u2014From the [Sermons] to Ammon to Tat\u201d; where \u201cto Tat\u201d is evidently a marginal correction for an erroneous \u201cto Ammon.\u201d G. pp. 292-294; M. i. 204, 205; W. i. 290-292.\nM\u00e9nard, Livre IV., No. iii. of \u201cFragments from the Books of Hermes to his Son Tat,\u201d pp. 238, 239.)\n1. [Her.] The Lord and Demiurge of all eternal bodies, Tat, when He had made them once for all, made them no more, nor doth He make them [now].\nCommitting them unto themselves, and co-uniting them with one another, He let them go, in want of naught, as everlasting things.\nIf they have want of any, it will be want of one another and not of any increase to their number from without, in that they are immortal.\nFor that it needs must be that bodies made by Him should have their nature of this kind.\n2. Our Demiurge, 1 however, who is [himself already] in a body, 2 hath made us,\u2014he makes for ever, and will [ever] make, bodies corruptible and under sway of death.\nFor \u2019twere not law that he should imitate the Maker of himself,\u2014all the more so as \u2019tis impossible.\nFor that the latter did create from the first essence which is bodiless; the former made as from the bodying 3 brought into existence [by his Lord].\n3. It follows, then, according to right reason, that while those bodies, since they are brought into existence from incorporal essence, are free from death, ours are corruptible and under sway of death,\u2014in that our matter is composed of bodies, 4 as may be seen from their being weak and needing much assistance.\nFor how would it be possible our bodies\u2019 continuity should last, unless it had some nutriment imported [into it] from similar elements, and [so] renewed our bodies day by day?\nFor that we have a stream of earth, and water,\nfire, and air, flowing into us, which renovates our bodies, and keeps our tent 1 together.\nWe are too weak to bear the motions [of our frames], enduring them not even for one single day.\nFor know, [my] son, that if our bodies did not rest at night, we should not last a single day.\n4. Wherefore, our Maker, being good, and with foreknowledge of all things, in order that the animal may last, hath given sleep, the greatest [calm 2] of the fatigue of motion, and hath appointed equal time to each, or rather more, for rest.\nPonder well, son, the mightiest energy of sleep,\u2014the opposite to the soul\u2019s [energy], but not inferior to it.\nFor that just as the soul is motion\u2019s energy, so bodies also cannot live without [the help of] sleep.\nFor \u2019tis the relaxation and the recreation of the jointed limbs; it also operates within,\nconverting into body the fresh supply of matter that flows in, apportioning to each its proper [kind],\u2014the water to the blood, the earth to bones and marrow, the air to nerves and veins, the fire to sight. 1\nWherefore the body, too, feels keen delight in sleep, for it is sleep that brings this [feeling of] delight into activity.\nPatrizzi\u2019s title is by no means descriptive of the main contents of the excerpt, which is evidently from the Sermons of Hermes to Tat, and from the same collection of these from which Stob\u00e6us has taken the previous two extracts,\u2014that is, presumably, the Expository Sermons.\n31:1 That is, the Demiurge of our bodies, which are not everlasting.\n31:2 The Sun, perhaps; cf. C. H., xvi. 18; and Ex., iii. 6 and iv. 2; and Lact., D. I., iv. 6.\n31:3 \u03c3\u03c9\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03ce\u03c3\u03b5\u03c9\u03c2,\u2014cf. Ex. viii. 5.\n31:4 Sc. the elements.\n32:1 \u03c3\u03ba\u1fc6\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2,\u2014used by Plato (ap. Clem. Alex., 703), and the Pythagoreans (Tim\u00e6us Locr., 100 A, 101, C, E), and the Later Platonists, for the body as the tabernacle of the soul. See especially the response of the Oracle at Delphi, when consulted concerning the state of the soul of Plotinus after death, as quoted by Porphyry in his Life of Plotinus: \u201cBut now since thou hast struck thy tent, and left the tomb of thy angelic soul\u201d (see my \u201cLives of the Later Platonists\u201d in The Theosophical Review (July, 1896), xviii. 372. Cf. Ex. iii. 1 and 5; and C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 12 and 15.\n32:2 Added by Heeren to complete the sense.\n33:1 Cf. C. H., xvi. 7, note.","title":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 3: I. Excerpts by Stob\u00e6us: Excerpt VII. Of Bodies Everlasting and Bodies Perishable","type":"page"}