22. Wherefore, my son, thou shouldst give praise to God and pray that thou mayst have thy mind Good [Mind]. It is, then, to a better state the soul doth pass; it cannot to a worse.
Further there is an intercourse of souls; those of the gods have intercourse with those of men, and those of men with souls of creatures which possess no reason.
The higher, further, have in charge the lower; the gods look after men, men after animals irrational, while God hath charge of all; for He is higher than them all and all are less than He.
Cosmos is subject, then, to God, man to the Cosmos, and irrationals to man. But God is o’er them all, and God contains them all.
God’s rays, to use a figure, are His energies; the Cosmos’s are natures; the arts and sciences are man’s.
The energies act through the Cosmos, thence through the nature-rays of Cosmos upon man; the nature-rays [act] through the elements; man [acteth] through the sciences and arts.
23. This is the dispensation of the universe, depending from the nature of the One, pervading [all things] through the Mind, than which is naught diviner or of greater energy; and naught a greater means for the at-oning men to gods and gods to men.
He, [Mind,] is the Good Daimon. Blessed the soul that is most filled with Him, and wretched is the soul that’s empty of the Mind.
Tat. Father, what dost thou mean, again?
Her. Dost think then, son, that every soul hath the Good [Mind]? For ’tis of Him we speak, not of the mind in service of which we just were speaking, the mind sent down for [the soul’s] chastisement.
24. For soul without the mind “can neither speak nor act.” For oftentimes the mind doth leave the soul, and at that time the soul nor sees nor understands, but is just like a thing that hath no reason. Such is the power of mind.
Yet doth it not endure a sluggish soul, but leaveth such a soul tied to the body and bound tight down by it. Such soul, my son, doth not have Mind; and therefore such an one should not be called a man. For that man is a thing-of-life divine; man is not measured with the rest of lives of things upon the earth, but with the lives above in heaven, who are called gods.
Nay more, if we must boldly speak the truth, the true “man” is e’en higher than the gods, or at the [very] least the gods and men are every whit in power each with the other equal.
25. For no one of the gods in heaven shall come down on the earth, o’er-stepping heaven’s limit; whereas man doth mount up to heaven and measure it; he knows what things of it are high, what things are low, and learns precisely all things else besides. And greater thing than all; without e’en quitting earth, he doth ascend above. So vast a sweep doth he possess of ecstasy.
For this cause can a man dare say that man on earth is god subject to death, while god in heaven is man from death immune.
Wherefore the dispensation of all things is brought about by means of these, the twain—Cosmos and Man —but by the One.