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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.
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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? [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]