ABOUT THE COMMON MIND
OF HERMES TO TAT
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 unto 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 upon 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 towards 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 ever are they 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 over-set.
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?
Her. 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 (logos) 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 the 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?
Her. [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 First-born God, gazing upon 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 Æon. 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 colour from the passions.
Her. Well put, my son! Thou questionest right nobly, and it is just that I as well should answer [nobly].
11. All things incorporal when in a body are subject unto passion, and in the proper sense they are [themselves] all passions.
For every thing that moves [another] is incorporal; while every thing that’s moved is body.
Incorporals 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.