|
12. About The Common Mind
1. Hermes: The Mind, O Tat, is of
God's very essence - (if such a thing as essence of God there be) - and
what that is, it and it only knows precisely.
The Mind, then, is not separated off from God's essentiality, but is
united to it, as light to sun.
This Mind in men is God, and for this cause some of mankind are gods,
and their humanity is nigh unto divinity.
For the Good Daimon said: "Gods are immortal men, and men are mortal
gods."
2. 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.
But in irrational lives their soul is life devoid of mind; for Mind is
the in-worker of the souls of men for good - He works on them for their
own good.
In lives irrational He doth co-operate with each one's nature; but in
the souls of men He counteracteth them.
For every soul, when it becomes embodied, is instantly depraved by
pleasure and by pain.
For in a compound body, just like juices, pain and pleasure seethe, and
into them the soul, on entering in, is plunged.
3. O'er 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.
In just the selfsame way the Mind inflicteth pain on the soul, to rescue
it from pleasure, whence comes its every ill.
The great ill of the soul is godlessness; then followeth fancy for all
evil things and nothing good.
So, then, Mind counteracting it doth work good on the soul, as the
physician health upon the body.
4. But whatsoever human souls have not the Mind as pilot, they share in
the same fate as souls of lives irrational.
For [Mind] becomes co-worker with them, giving full play to the desires
toward which [such souls] are borne - [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 are
they ever satiate of ills.
For 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.
5. Tat: In that case, father mine, the teaching (logos) as to Fate,
which previously thou didst explain to me, risks to be overset.
For that if it be absolutely fated for a man to fornicate, or commit
sacrilege, or do some other evil deed, why is he punished - when he hath
done the deed from Fate's necessity?
Hermes: All works, my son, are Fate's; and without Fate naught of things
corporal - or good, or ill - can come to pass.
But it is fated, too, that he who doeth ill, shall suffer. And for this
cause he doth it - that he may suffer what he suffereth, because he did
it.
6. But for the moment, [Tat,] let be the teaching 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: - what Mind can do, and how it
is [so] different - in 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.
Of men, again, we must class some as led by reason, and others as
unreasoning.
7. But all men are subject to Fate, and genesis and change, for these
are the beginning and the end of Fate.
And though all men do suffer fated things, those led by reason (those
whom we said Mind doth guide) do not endure like suffering with the
rest; but, since they've freed themselves from viciousness, not being
bad, they do not suffer bad.
Tat: How meanest thou again, my father? Is not the fornicator bad; the
murderer bad; and [so with] all the rest?
Hermes: [I meant not that;] but that the 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.
The quality of change he can no more escape than that of genesis.
But it is possible for one who hath the Mind, to free himself from vice.
8. Wherefore I've ever heard, my son, Good Daimon also say - (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 Firstborn God, gazing on
all things, give voice to words (logoi) divine) - yea, once I heard Him
say:
"All things are one, and most of all the bodies which the mind alone
perceives. Our life is owing to [God's] Energy and Power and Aeon. 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'er it wills."
9. So do thou understand, and carry back this word (logos) unto the
question thou didst ask before - I mean about Mind's Fate.
For if thou dost with accuracy, son, eliminate [all] captious arguments
(logoi), thou wilt discover that of very truth the Mind, the Soul of
God, doth rule o'er all - o'er Fate, and Law, and all things else; and
nothing is impossible to it - neither o'er Fate to set a human soul, nor
under Fate to set [a soul] neglectful of what comes to pass. Let this so
far suffice from the Good Daimon's most good [words].
Tat: Yea, [words] divinely spoken, father mine, truly and helpfully. But
further still explain me this.
10. Thou said'st that Mind in lives irrational worked in them as [their]
nature, co-working with their impulses.
But impulses of lives irrational, as I do think, are passions.
Now if the Mind co-worketh with [these] impulses, and if the impulses of
[lives] irrational be passions, then is Mind also passion, taking its
color from the passions.
Hermes: Well put, my son! Thou questionest right nobly, and it is just
that I as well should answer [nobly].
11. All things incorporeal when in a body are subject unto passion, and
in the proper sense they are [themselves] all passions.
For every thing that moves itself is incorporeal; while every thing
that's moved is body.
Incorporeals are further moved by Mind, and movement's passion.
Both, then, are subject unto passion - both mover and the moved, the
former being ruler and the latter ruled.
But when a man hath freed himself from body, then is he also freed from
passion.
But, more precisely, son, naught is impassible, but all are passible.
Yet passion differeth from passibility; for that the one is active,
while the other's passive.
Incorporeals moreover act upon themselves, for either they are
motionless or they are moved; but whichsoe'er it be, it's passion.
But bodies are invaribly acted on, and therefore they are passible.
Do not, then, let terms trouble thee; action and passion are both the
selfsame thing. To use the fairer sounding term, however, does no harm.
12. Tat: Most clearly hast thou, father mine, set forth the teaching
(logos).
Hermes: Consider this as well, my son; that these two things God hath
bestowed on man beyond all mortal lives - both mind and speech (logos)
equal to immortality. He hath the mind for knowing God and uttered
speech (logos) for eulogy of Him.
And if one useth these for what he ought, he'll differ not a whit from
the immortals. Nay, rather, on departing from the body, he will be
guided by the twain unto the Choir of Gods and Blessed Ones.
13. Tat: Why, father mine! - do not the other lives make use of speech
(logos)?
Hermes: 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.
Tat: But with men also, father mine, according to each race, speech
differs.
Hermes: 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.
Thou seemest, son, to be in ignorance of Reason's (Logos) worth and
greatness. For that the Blessed God, Good Daimon, hath declared:
"Soul is in Body, Mind in Soul; but Reason (Logos) is in Mind, and Mind
in God; and God is Father of [all] these."
14. The Reason, then, is the Mind's image, and Mind God's [image]; while
Body is [the image] of the Form; and Form [the image] of the Soul.
The subtlest part of Matter is, then, Air; of Air, Soul; of Soul, Mind;
and of Mind, God.
And God surroundeth all and permeateth all; while Mind Surroundeth Soul,
Soul Air, Air Matter.
Necessity and Providence and Nature are instruments of Cosmos and of
Matter's ordering; while of intelligible things each is Essence, and
Sameness is their Essence.
But of the bodies of the Cosmos each is many; for through possessiong
Sameness, [these] composed bodies, though they do change from one into
another of themselves, do natheless keep the incorruption of their
Sameness.
15. 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.
Now it is units that give birth to number and increase it, and, being
decomposed, are taken back again into themselves.
Matter is one; and this whole Cosmos - the mighty God and image of the
mightier One, both with Him unified, and the conserver of the Will and
Order of the Father - is filled full of Life.
Naught is there in it throughout the whole of Aeon, the Father's
[everlasting] Re-establishment - nor of the whole, nor of the parts -
which doth not live.
For not a single thing that's dead, hath been, or is, or shall be in
[this] Cosmos.
For that the Father willed it should have Life as long as it should be.
Wherefore it needs must be a God.
16. How then, O son, could there be in the God, the image of the Father,
in the plenitude of Life - dead things?
For that death is corruption, and corruption destruction.
How then could any part of that which knoweth no corruption be
corrupted, or any whit of him the God destroyed?
Tat: Do they not, then, my father, die - the lives in it, that are its
parts?
Hermes: Hush, son! - led into error by the term in use for what takes
place.
They do not die, my son, but are dissolved as compound bodies.
Now 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.
For what is the activity of life? Is it not motion? What then in Cosmos
is there that hath no motion? Naught is there, son!
17. Tat: Doth not Earth even, father, seem to thee to have no motion?
Hermes: Nay, son; but rather that she is the only thing which, though in
very rapid motion, is also stable.
For 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?
For 'tis impossible that without motion one who doth engender, should do
so.
That thou should ask if the fourth part is not inert, is most
ridiculous; for the body which doth have no motion, gives sign of
nothing but inertia.
18. Know, therefore, generally, my son, that all that is in Cosmos is
being moved for increase or for decrease.
Now that which is kept moving, also lives; but there is no necessity
that that which lives, should be all same.
For 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.
It is the terms employed that confuse men. For 'tis not genesis that
constituteth life, but 'tis sensation; it is not change that
constituteth death, but 'tis forgetfulness.
Since, then, these things are so, they are immortal all - Matter, [and]
Life, [and] Spirit, Mind [and] Soul, of which whatever liveth, is
composed.
19. 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.
For 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 - by birds, by inward parts, by wind, by tree.
Wherefore doth man lay claim to know things past, things present and to
come.
20. Observe this too, my son; that each one of the other lives
inhabiteth one portion of the Cosmos - aquatic creatures water, terrene
earth, and aery creatures air; while man doth use all these - earth,
water air [and] fire; he seeth Heaven, too, and doth contact it with
[his] sense.
But God surroundeth all, and permeateth all, for He is energy and power;
and it is nothing difficult, my son, to conceive God.
21. But if thou wouldst Him also contemplate, behold the ordering of the
Cosmos, and [see] the orderly behavior 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] - gods, daimones and men!
Tat: But these are purely energies, O father mine!
Hermes: If, then, they're purely energies, my son - by whom, then, are
they energized except by God?
Or art thou ignorant, that just as Heaven, Earth, Water, Air, are parts
of Cosmos, in just the selfsame way God's parts are Life and
Immortality, [and] Energy, and Spirit, and Necessity, and Providence,
and Nature, Soul, and Mind, and the Duration of all these that is called
Good?
And there are naught of things that have become, or are becoming, in
which God is not.
22. Tat: Is He in Matter, father, then?
Hermes: Matter, my son, is separate from God, in order that thou may'st
attribute to it the quality of space. But what thing else than mass
think'st thou it is, if it's not energized? Whereas if it be energized,
by whom is it made so? For energies, we said, are parts of God.
By whom are, then, all lives enlivened? By whom are things immortal made
immortal? By whom changed things made changeable?
And whether thou dost speak of Matter, of Body, or of Essence, know that
these too are energies of God; and that materiality is Matter's energy,
that corporeality is Bodies' energy, and that essentiality doth
constituteth the energy of Essence; and this is God - the All.
23. 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.
Unto this Reason (Logos), son, thy adoration and thy worship pay. There
is one way alone to worship God; [it is] not to be bad.
Go to Next Page
|