<This somewhat
diffuse essay covers a series of topics, starting with (and to some extent
from) the concept that the set of perceptions we call "thoughts" and the set
we call "sensory perceptions" are not significantly different from each
other. The implications of this idea play a significant role in later
Hermetic thought, particularly in the areas of magic and the Art of Memory;
in this tractate, though, the issues involved are barely touched, and the
argument wanders into moral dualisms and the equally important, but
distinct, idea that the Cosmos is itself a divine creative power.
<Section 10, in
which understanding is held up as the source and precondition of belief,
should probably be seen as part of the same ancient debate on the roles of
faith and reason that gave rise to Tertullian's famous credo quia
absurdum ("I believe because it is absurd"). - JMG>
1. I gave the
Perfect Sermon (Logos) yesterday, Asclepius; today I think it right, as
sequel thereunto, to go through point by point the Sermon about Sense.
Now sense and
thought do seem to differ, in that the former has to do with matter, the
latter has to do with substance. But unto me both seem to be at-one and not
to differ - in men I mean. In other lives <or living creatures> sense is at-oned
with Nature, but in men thought.
Now mind doth
differ just as much from thought as God doth from divinity. For that
divinity by God doth come to be, and by mind thought, the sister of the word
(logos) and instruments of one another. For neither doth the word (logos)
find utterance without thought, nor is thought manifested without word.
2. So sense and
thought both flow together into man, as though they were entwined with one
another. For neither without sensing can one think, nor without thinking
sense.
But it is
possible [they say] to think a thing apart from sense, as those who fancy
sights in dreams. But unto me it seems that both of these activities occur
in dream-sight, and sense doth pass out of the sleeping to the waking state.
For man is
separated into soul and body, and only when the two sides of his sense agree
together, does utterance of its thought conceived by mind take place.
3. For it is
mind that doth conceive all thoughts - good thoughts when it receives the
seeds from God, their contraries when [it receiveth them] from the
daimonials; no part of Cosmos being free of daimon, who stealthily doth
creep into the daimon who's illumined by God's light <i.e., the human soul>,
and sow in him the seed of its own energy.
And mind
conceives the seed thus sown, adultery, murder, parricide, [and] sacrilege,
impiety, [and] strangling, casting down precipices, and all such other deeds
as are the work of evil daimons.
4. The seeds of
God, 'tis true, are few, but vast and fair, and good - virtue and
self-control, devotion. Devotion is God-gnosis; and he who knoweth God,
being filled with all good things, thinks godly thoughts and not thoughts
like the many [think].
For this cause
they who Gnostic are, please not the many, nor the many them. They are
thought mad and laughted at; they're hated and despised, and sometimes even
put to death.
For we did say
that bad must needs dwell on earth, where 'tis in its own place. Its place
is earth, and not Cosmos, as some will sometimes say with impious tongue.
But he who is a
devotee of God, will bear with all - once he has sensed the Gnosis. For such
an one all things, e'en though they be for others bad, are for him good;
deliberately he doth refer them all unto the Gnosis. And, thing most
marvelous, 'tis he alone who maketh bad things good.
5. But I return
once more to the Discourse (Logos) on Sense. That sense doth share with
thought in man, doth constitute him man. But 'tis not [every] man, as I have
said, who benefits by thought; for this man is material, that other one
substantial.
For the material
man, as I have said, [consorting] with the bad, doth have his seed of
thought from daimons; while the substantial men [consorting] with the Good,
are saved by God.
Now God is Maker
of all things, and in His making, He maketh all [at last] like to Himself;
but they, while they're becoming good by exercise of their activity, are
unproductive things.
It is the
working of the Cosmic Course that maketh their becomings what they are,
befouling some of them with bad and others of them making clean with good.
For Cosmos, too,
Asclepius, possesseth sense-and-thought peculiar to itself, not like that of
man; 'tis not so manifold, but as it were a better and a simpler one.
6. The single
sense-and-thought of Cosmos is to make all things, and make them back into
itself again, as Organ of the Will of God, so organized that it, receiving
all the seeds into itself from God, and keeping them within itself, may make
all manifest, and [then] dissolving them, make them all new again; and thus,
like a Good Gardener of Life, things that have been dissolved, it taketh to
itself, and giveth them renewal once again.
There is no
thing to which it gives not life; but taking all unto itself it makes them
live, and is at the same time the Place of Life and its Creator.
7. Now bodies
matter [-made] are in diversity. Some are of earth, of water some, some are
of air, and some of fire.
But they are all
composed; some are more [composite], and some are simpler. The heavier ones
are more [composed], the lighter less so.
It is the speed
of Cosmos' Course that works the manifoldness of the kinds of births. For
being a most swift Breath, it doth bestow their qualities on bodies together
with the One Pleroma - that of Life.
8. God, then, is
Sire of Cosmos; Cosmos, of all in Cosmos. And Cosmos is God's Son; but
things in Cosmos are by Cosmos.
And properly
hath it been called Cosmos [Order]; for that it orders all with their
diversity of birth, with its not leaving aught without its life, with the
unweariedness of its activity, the speed of its necessity, the composition
of its elements, and order of its creatures.
The same, then,
of necessity and propriety should have the name of Order.
The
sense-and-thought, then, of all lives doth come into them from without,
inbreathed by what contains [them all]; whereas Cosmos receives them once
for all together with its coming into being, and keeps them as a gift from
God.
9. But God is
not, as some suppose, beyond the reach of sense-and-thought. It is through
superstition men thus impiously speak.
For all the
things that are, Asclepius, all are in God, are brought by God to be, and do
depend on Him - both things that act through bodies, and things that through
soul-substance make [other things] to move, and things that make things live
by means of spirit, and things that take unto themselves the things that are
worn out.
And rightly so;
nay, I would rather say, He doth not have these things; but I speak forth
the truth, He is them all Himself. He doth not get them from without, but
gives them out [from Him].
This is God's
sense-and-thought, ever to move all things. And never time shall be when
e'en a whit of things that are shall cease; and when I say "a whit of things
that are", I mean a whit of God. For thigs that are, God hath; nor aught [is
there] without Him, nor [is] He without aught.
10. These things
should seem to thee, Asclepius, if thou dost understand them, true; but if
thou dost not understand, things not to be believed.
To understand is
to believe, to not believe is not to understand.
My word (logos)
doth go before [thee] to the truth. But mighty is the mind, and when it hath
been led by word up to a certain point, it hath the power to come before
[thee] to the truth.
And having
thought o'er all these things, and found them consonant with those which
have already been translated by the reason, it hath [e'en now] believed, and
found its rest in that Fair Faith.
To those, then,
who by God['s good aid] do understand the things that have been said [by us]
above, they're credible; but unto those who understand them not, incredible.
Let so much,
then, suffice on thought-and-sense.
