{"collection":"Gnosticism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/gno/th3/th309.htm","path":"gno/th3/th309.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/gno/th3/th309.htm","text":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 3, by G.R.S. Mead, [1906]\n(Title from Patrizzi (p. 44); preceded by \u201cOf Thrice-greatest Hermes.\u201d\nText: Stob., Phys., xxxv. 6, under the heading: \u201cFrom the [Sermons] to Tat\u201d; G. pp. 284-291; M. i. 198-203; W. i. 284-289.\nM\u00e9nard, Livre IV., No. ii. of \u201cFragments from the Books of Hermes to his Son Tat,\u201d pp. 231-237.)\n1. Tat. Rightly hast thou explained these things, O father [mine]. Now give me further teaching as to those.\nFor thou hast said somewhere 1 that science and that art do constitute the rational\u2019s energy. 2\nBut now thou say\u2019st that the irrational lives, 3 through deprivation of the rational, are and are called ir-rational.\nAccording to this reasoning, [therefore], it follows of necessity that the irrational lives are\nwithout any share in science or in art, through deprivation of the rational.\n2. Her. [It follows] of necessity, [my] son.\nTat. How, then, O father, do we see some of irrational [creatures] using [both] intelligence, and art?\u2014the ants, for instance, storing their food for winter, and in like fashion, [too,] the creatures of the air building their nests, and the four-footed beasts [each] knowing their own holes. 1\nHer. These things they do, O son, neither by science nor by art, but by [the force of] nature.\nScience and art are teachable; but none of these irrationals is taught a thing.\nThings done by nature are [so] done by reason of the general energy of things.\nThings [done] by art and science are achieved by those who know, [and] not by all.\nThings done by all are brought into activity 2 by nature.\n3. For instance, all look up [to heaven]; but all [are] not musicians, or [are] all archers, or hunters, or the rest.\nBut some of them have learned one thing,\n[paragraph continues] [others another thing], science and art being active 1 [in them].\nIn the same way, if some ants only did this thing, and others not, thou would\u2019st have rightly said they acted by [the light] of science, and stored their food by means of art.\nBut if they all without distinction are driven by their nature to [do] this, though [it may be] against their will,\u2014\u2019tis plain they do not do it or by science or by art.\n4. For Tat, these energies, though [in themselves] they are incorporal, are [found] in bodies, and act through bodies.\nWherefore, O Tat, in that they are incorporal, thou sayest that they are immortal; but, in so far as without bodies they cannot manifest activity, 2 I say that they are ever in a body.\nThings once called into being for some purpose, or some cause, things that come under Providence and Fate, can never stay inactive of their proper energy.\nFor that which is, shall ever be; for that this [being] is [the very] body and the life of it.\n5. It follows from this reason, [then,] that these are always bodies.\nWherefore I say that \u201cbodying\u201d 3 itself is an eternal [exercise of] energy.\nIf bodies are on earth, they\u2019re subject unto dissolution; yet must these [ever] be [on earth to serve] as places and as organs for the energies.\nThe energies, however, [are] immortal, and the immortal is eternally,\u2014[that is, that] body-making, if it ever is, 1 is energy.\n6. [The energies] accompany the soul, though not appearing all at once.\nSome of them energize the man the moment that he\u2019s born, united with the soul round its irrational [parts]; whereas the purer ones, with change of age, 2 co-operate with the soul\u2019s rational part.\nBut all these energies depend on bodies. From godly 3 bodies they descend to mortal [frames], these body-making [energies]; each one of them is [ever] active, either around the body or the soul.\nYea, they are active with the soul itself without a body. They are for ever in activity.\nThe soul, however, is not for ever in a mortal body, for it can be without the body; whereas the energies can never be without the bodies.\nThis is a sacred saying (logos), son: Body apart from soul cannot persist; its being can. 1\n7. Tat. What dost thou mean, O father [mine]?\nHer. Thus understand it, Tat! When soul leaves body, body itself remains.\nBut [even] the body so abandoned, 2 as long as it remains, is in activity, being broken up and made to disappear.\nFor body without [the exercise of] energy could not experience these things. 3\nThis energy, accordingly, continues with the body when the soul has gone.\nThis, therefore, is the difference of an immortal body and a mortal one,\u2014that the immortal doth consist of a one single matter, but this [body does] not.\nThe former\u2019s active, and the latter\u2019s passive.\nFor every thing that maketh active is the stronger; and [every thing] that is made active is the weaker.\nThe stronger, too, being in authority and free, doth lead; the [weaker] follows [as] a slave.\n8. The energies, then, energize not only bodies that are ensouled, but also [bodies] unensouled,\n[paragraph continues] \u2014stocks, stones, 1 and all such things;\u2014both making [them] to grow, and to bear fruits, and ripening [them], dissolving, melting, rotting and crumbling [them], and setting up [in them] all like activities which bodies without souls can undergo.\nFor energy\u2019s 2 the name, O son, for just the thing that\u2019s going on,\u2014that is becoming.\nAnd many things needs must for ever be becoming; nay, rather, all things [must].\nFor never is Cosmos bereft of any of existent things, but being borne 3 for aye in its own self, it bears existent things,\u2014[things] that shall never cease from being destroyed again. 4\n9. Know, then, that energy of every kind is ever free from death,\u2014no matter what it is, or in what body.\nAnd of the energies, some are of godly bodies, and some of those which are corruptible; some [are] general, and some special. Some [are] of genera, and some are of the parts of every genus.\nThe godly ones, [accordingly], are those that exercise their energies through everlasting bodies. And these are perfect [energies], in that [they energize] through perfect bodies.\nBut partial [energies are] those [that energize] through each one of the [single] living things.\nAnd special [energies are those that energize] through each one of existent things.\n10. This argument, accordingly, O son, deduces that all things are full of energies.\nFor though it needs must be that energies should be in bodies,\u2014and there be many bodies in the Cosmos,\u2014I say that energies are many more than bodies.\nFor often in one body there is [found] one, and a second and a third [activity],\u2014not counting in the general ones that come with it.\nBy general ones I mean the purely corporal ones, that exercise themselves through the sensations 1 and the motions [of the body].\nFor that without these energies the body [of an animal] can not persist.\n11. The souls of men, however, have a second class of energies,\u2014the special ones [that exercise themselves] through arts, and sciences, and practices, and [purposed] doings. 2\nFor that the feelings 3 follow on the energies or rather are completions 4 of the energies.\nKnow, then, O son, the difference of energy and of sensation.\n[Thus] energy is sent down from above; whereas sensation, being in the body and having its existence from it, receives the energy\nand makes it manifest, as though it did embody it.\nWherefore I say sensations are both corporal and mortal, and last as long as doth the body [only].\nNay, rather, its sensations are born together with the body, and they die with it.\n12. But the immortal bodies in themselves have no sensation,\u2014[not even an] immortal [one], as though they were composed out of some essence of some kind.\nFor that sensation doth arise entirely from naught else than either from the bad or else the good that\u2019s added to the body, or that is, on the contrary, taken [from it] again.\nBut with eternal bodies there is no adding to nor taking from.\nWherefore, sensation doth not occur in them.\n13. Tat. Is, then, sensation felt in every body?\nHer. In every body, son; and energies are active in all [bodies, too].\nTat. Even in bodies without souls, O father [mine]?\nHer. Even in them, O son. There are, however, differences in the sensations.\nThe feelings of the rationals occur with reason; those of irrationals are simply corporal; as for the things that have no soul, they [also] have\nsensations, but passive ones,\u2014experience of increase [only] and decrease. 1\nMoreover, passion and sensation depend from one [same] head, 2 and they are gathered up again into the same, and that, too, by the energies.\n14. Of lives 3 with souls there are two other energies which go with the sensations and the passions,\u2014grief and joy.\nAnd without these, an ensouled life, and most of all a rational one, could not experience sensation.\nWherefore, I say that there are forms of passions,\u2014[and] forms that dominate the rational lives more [than the rest].\nThe energies, then, are the active forces [in sensations], while the sensations are the indications of the energies.\n15. Further, as these 4 are corporal, they\u2019re set in motion by the irrational parts of [a man\u2019s] soul; wherefore, I say that both of them are mischievous.\nFor that both joy, though [for the moment] it provides sensation joined with pleasure, immediately becomes a cause of many ills 5 to\nhim who feeleth it; while grief [itself] provides [still] greater pains and suffering.\nWherefore, they both would seem [most] mischievous.\n16. Tat. Can, then, sensation be the same in soul and body, father [mine]?\nHer. How dost thou mean,\u2014sensation in the soul, [my] son?\nTat. Surely it cannot be that soul\u2019s incorporal, and that sensation is a body, father,\u2014sensation which is sometimes in a body and sometimes not, [just as the soul]?\nHer. If we should put it in a body, son, we should [then] represent it as like the soul or [like] the energies. For that we say these 1 are incorporals in bodies.\nBut [as] sensation\u2019s neither energy nor soul, nor any other thing than body, according to what has been said above, it cannot, therefore, be incorporal.\nAnd if it\u2019s not incorporal, it must be body.\nFor of existing things some must be bodies and the rest incorporal.\nAgain, as with the last excerpt, the earlier editions of Stob\u00e6us have Asclepius and Tat as the persons of\nthe dialogue instead of Hermes and Tat. Wachsmuth gives them correctly.\nThe second sentence is of great interest, for it refers us presumably to C. H., x. (xi.), 22: \u201cGod\u2019s rays, to use a figure, are his energies; the Cosmos\u2019s are natures; the arts and sciences are man\u2019s.\u201d Seeing, however, that \u201cThe Key\u201d is an Epitome of the General Sermons to Tat, the statement may also have been made in one of these sermons.\nIn either case the existence of these General Sermons is presupposed, and, therefore, it may be that our excerpt is, again, one of the Expository Sermons to Tat.\nThe beginning of the Sermon has clearly been omitted by Stob\u00e6us, and apparently the end also.\n34:1 That is in some previous sermon.\n34:2 Action or operation,\u2014\u1f10\u03bd\u03ad\u03c1\u03b3\u03b5\u03b9\u03b1\u03bd \u03b5\u1f36\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03bb\u03bf\u03b3\u03b9\u03ba\u03bf\u1fe6. Cf. \u00a7 11 below.\n34:3 Or animals.\n35:1 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03c4\u1f70 \u1f00\u03ad\u03c1\u03b9\u03b1 \u03b6\u1ff6\u03b1 \u1f41\u03bc\u03bf\u03af\u03c9\u03c2 \u03ba\u03b1\u03bb\u03b9\u1f70\u03c2 \u1f11\u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u03bf\u1fd6\u03c2 \u03c3\u03c5\u03bd\u03c4\u03b9\u03b8\u03ad\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1, \u03c4\u1f70 \u03b4\u1f72 \u03c4\u03b5\u03c4\u03c1\u03ac\u03c0\u03bf\u03b4\u03b1 \u03b3\u03bd\u03c9\u03c1\u03af\u03b6\u03bf\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1 \u03c4\u03bf\u1f7a\u03c2 \u03c6\u03c9\u03bb\u03b5\u03bf\u1f7a\u03c2 \u03c4\u03bf\u1f7a\u03c2 \u1f30\u03b4\u03af\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2. Compare Matt. viii. 20 = Luke ix. 58 (word for word): \u03b1\u1f31 \u1f00\u03bb\u03ce\u03c0\u03b5\u03ba\u03b5\u03c2 \u03c6\u03c9\u03bb\u03b5\u03bf\u1f7a\u03c2 \u1f14\u03c7\u03bf\u03c5\u03c3\u03b9\u03bd \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03c4\u1f70 \u03c0\u03b5\u03c4\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd\u1f70 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03bf\u1f50\u03c1\u03b1\u03bd\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1\u03c3\u03ba\u03b7\u03bd\u03ce\u03c3\u03b5\u03b9\u03c2\u2014\u201cThe foxes have holes and the birds of the air nests.\u201d The first and third Evangelists here copy verbally from their \u201cLogia\u201d source.\n35:2 Or energized.\n36:1 Or energizing.\n36:2 Lit. energize.\n36:3 \u03c3\u03c9\u03bc\u03ac\u03c4\u03c9\u03c3\u03b9\u03bd,\u2014cf. Ex. vii. 2; cf. also the \u03c8\u03cd\u03c7\u03c9\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2 of K. K., 9.\n37:1 That is, if it goes on continually.\n37:2 \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u1f70 \u03bc\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b2\u03bf\u03bb\u1f74\u03bd \u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 \u1f21\u03bb\u03b9\u03ba\u03af\u03b1\u03c2,\u2014generally supposed to be the seventh year. Compare the apocryphal logos: \u201cHe who seeks me shall find me in children from the age of seven years\u201d\u2014quoted by the Christian Overwriter of the Naassene Document from the Gospel according to Thomas (Hipp., Philos., v. 7; \u00a7 7 in \u201cMyth of Man\u201d).\n37:3 Or divine,\u2014the bodies of the Gods, the heavenly bodies, or the spiritual and immortal bodies of the soul.\n38:1 \u03c3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b5\u03c3\u03c4\u03ac\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9 \u03bc\u1f72\u03bd \u03c3\u1ff6\u03bc\u03b1 \u03c7\u03c9\u03c1\u1f76\u03c2 \u03c8\u03c5\u03c7\u1fc6\u03c2 \u03bf\u1f50 \u03b4\u03cd\u03bd\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9, \u03c4\u1f78 \u03b4\u1f72 \u03b5\u1f36\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9 \u03b4\u03cd\u03bd\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9,\u2014\u201cits being\u201d presumably refers to the abstract \u201cbodying\u201d (\u03c3\u03c9\u03bc\u03ac\u03c4\u03c9\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2) referred to above.\n38:2 Lit. this body.\n38:3 Sc. dissolution and disappearance.\n39:1 Cf. Naassene Document, \u00a7 4, and \u00a7 13 below.\n39:2 Or activity.\n39:3 Or conceived.\n39:4 Reading \u03b1\u1f56\u03b8\u03b9\u03c2 for \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6, with Heeren.\n40:1 Or feelings.\n40:2 \u1f10\u03bd\u03b5\u03c1\u03b3\u03b7\u03bc\u03ac\u03c4\u03c9\u03bd,\u2014cf. \u00a7 1 above.\n40:3 Or sensations.\n40:4 Or effects\u2014\u1f00\u03c0\u03bf\u03c4\u03b5\u03bb\u03ad\u03c3\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1.\n42:1 Cf. \u00a7 8 above, and note.\n42:2 \u1f00\u03c0\u1f78 \u03bc\u03b9\u1fb6\u03c2 \u03ba\u03bf\u03c1\u03c5\u03c6\u1fc6\u03c2 \u1f24\u03c1\u03c4\u03b7\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9. Compare this with Plato, Ph\u00e6do, i. 60 B, where Socrates speaks of the pleasant and the painful as \u201ctwo (bodies) hanging from one head\u201d (\u1f10\u03ba \u03bc\u03b9\u1fb6\u03c2 \u03ba\u03bf\u03c1\u03c5\u03c6\u1fc6\u03c2 \u03c3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b7\u03bc\u03bc\u03ad\u03bd\u03c9).\n42:3 Or animals.\n42:4 That is, the sensation of pleasure and pain.\n42:5 Sc. by contrast.\n43:1 That is, soul and energies.","title":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 3: I. Excerpts by Stob\u00e6us: Excerpt VIII. Of Energy and Feeling","type":"page"}