<This sermon on the
nature of the Good, like To Asclepius (CH II), relies heavily
on the technical language of classical Greek philosophy - a point which some
of Mead's translations tend to obscure. "The Good," in Greek thought, is
also the self-caused and self-sufficient, and thus has little in common with
later conceptions of "goodness," just as the Latin word virtus and
the modern Christian concept of "virtue" are very nearly opposites despite
their etymological connection. The word "passion" here also needs to be
understood in its older sense, as the opposite of "action" (cf. "active" and
"passive").
<The negative attitude
toward humanity and the cosmos which appears in this text contrasts sharply
with the more positive assessment found, for example, in the Poemandres
(CH I) or in the Asclepius - a reminder that these documents are
relics of a diverse and not necessarily consistent school of thought. - JMG>
1. Good, O Asclepius, is
in none else save in God alone; nay, rather, Good is God Himself eternally.
If it be so, [Good] must
be essence, from every kind of motion and becoming free (though naught is
free from It), possessed of stable energy around Itself, never too little,
nor too much, an ever-full supply. [Though] one, yet [is It] source of all;
for what supplieth all is Good. When I, moreover, say [supplieth] altogether
[all], it is for ever Good. But this belongs to no one else save God alone.
For He stands not in need
of any thing, so that desiring it He should be bad; nor can a single thing
of things that are be lost to him, on losing which He should be pained; for
pain is part of bad.
Nor is there aught
superior to Him, that He should be subdued by it; nor any peer to Him to do
Him wrong, or [so that] He should fall in love on its account; nor aught
that gives no ear to Him, whereat He should grow angry; nor wiser aught, for
Him to envy.
2. Now as all these are
non-existent in His being, what is there left but Good alone?
For just as naught of bad
is to be found in such transcendent Being, so too in no one of the rest will
Good be found.
For in them are all of
the other things <i.e., those things which are not Good> - both in the
little and the great, both in each severally and in this living one that's
greater than them all and the mightiest [of them] <i.e., the cosmos>.
For things subject to
birth abound in passions, birth in itself being passible. But where there's
passion, nowhere is there Good; and where is Good, nowhere a single passion.
For where is day, nowhere is night; and where is night, day is nowhere.
Wherefore in genesis the
Good can never be, but only be in the ingenerate.
But seeing that the
sharing in all things hath been bestowed on matter, so doth it share in
Good.
In this way is the Cosmos
Good; that, in so far as it doth make all things, as far as making goes it's
Good, but in all other things it is not Good. For it's both passible and
subject unto motion, and maker of things passible.
3. Whereas in man by
greater or less of bad is good determined. For what is not too bad down
here, is good, and good down here is the least part of bad.
It cannot, therefore, be
that good down here should be quite clean of bad, for down here good is
fouled with bad; and being fouled, it stays no longer good, and staying not
it changes into bad.
In God alone, is,
therefore, Good, or rather Good is God Himself.
So then, Asclepius, the
name alone of Good is found in men, the thing itself nowhere [in them], for
this can never be.
For no material body doth
contain It - a thing bound on all sides by bad, by labors, pains, desires
and passions, by error and by foolish thoughts.
And greatest ill of all,
Asclepius, is that each of these things that have been said above, is
thought down here to be the greatest good.
And what is still an even
greater ill, is belly-lust, the error that doth lead the band of all the
other ills - the thing that makes us turn down here from Good.
4. And I, for my part,
give thanks to God, that He hath cast it in my mind about the Gnosis of the
Good, that it can never be It should be in the world. For that the world is
"fullness" of the bad, but God of Good, and Good of God.
The excellencies of the
Beautiful are round the very essence [of the Good]; nay, they do seem too
pure, too unalloyed; perchance 'tis they that are themselves Its essences.
For one may dare to say,
Asclepius - if essence, sooth, He have - God's essence is the Beautiful; the
Beautiful is further also Good.
There is no Good that can
be got from objects in the world. For all the things that fall beneath the
eye are image-things and pictures as it were; while those that do not meet
[the eye are the realities], especially the [essence] of the Beautiful and
Good.
Just as the eye cannot
see God, so can it not behold the Beautiful and Good. For that they are
integral parts of God, wedded to Him alone, inseparate familiars, most
beloved, with whom God is Himself in love, or they with God.
5. If thou canst God
conceive, thou shalt conceive the Beautiful and Good, transcending Light,
made lighter than the Light by God. That Beauty is beyond compare, inimitate
that Good, e'en as God is Himself.
As, then, thou dost
conceive of God, conceive the Beautiful and Good. For they cannot be joined
with aught of other things that live, since they can never be divorced from
God.
Seek'st thou for God,
thou seekest for the Beautiful. One is the Path that leadeth unto It -
Devotion joined with Gnosis.
6. And thus it is that
they who do not know and do not tread Devotion's Path, do dare to call man
beautiful and good, though he have ne'er e'en in his visions seen a whit
that's Good, but is enveloped with every kind of bad, and thinks the bad is
good, and thus doth make unceasing use of it, and even feareth that it
should be ta'en from him, so straining every nerve not only to preserve but
even to increase it.
Such are the things that
men call good and beautiful, Asclepius - things which we cannot flee or
hate; for hardest thing of all is that we've need of them and cannot live
without them.