Yesterday, Asclepius, I delivered a perfect discourse.

 

The Thirteenth Book
of
Hermes Trismegistus.

Of Sense and Understanding. 

1. Yesterday, Asclepius, I delivered a perfect discourse, but now I think it necessary in suite of that to dispute also of sense.

2. For sense and understanding seem to differ, because the one is material, the other essential.

3. But unto me, they appear to be both one, or united and not divided, in men, I mean. 

4. For in other living creatures, sense is united unto nature, but in men to understanding.

5. But the mind differs from the understanding as much as God from divinity.

6. For divinity is from or under God, and understanding from the mind, being the sister of the word or speech, and they the instrument one of another.

7. For neither is the word pronounced without understanding, neither is understanding manifested without the word. 

8. Therefore, sense and understanding both flow together into a man, as if they were infolded one within another.

9. For neither is it possible without sense to understand, nor can we have sense without understanding.

10. And yet it is possible - for the time being - that the understanding may understand without sense, as they that fantasy visions in their dreams.

11. But it seems unto me that both the operations are in the visions of dreams, and that the sense is stirred up out of sleep unto awaking. 

12. For man is divided into a body and a soul. When both parts of the sense accord one with another, then is the understanding childed, or brought forth by the mind, pronounced. 

13. For the mind brings forth all intellections or understandings. Good ones, when it receives good seed from God, and the contrary when it receives them from the devils. 

14. For there is no part of the world void of the Devil, which entering in privately sowed the seed of his own proper operation, and the mind did make pregnant, or did bring forth that which was sown: adulteries, murders, striking of parents, sacrileges, impieties, stranglings, throwing down headlong, and all other things which are the works of evil demons. 

15. And the seeds of God are few but great, and fair, and good: virtue and temperance, and piety.

16. And piety is the knowledge of God, whom whosoever knows, being full of all good things, has divine understanding, and not like the many.

17. And therefore they that have that knowledge neither please the multitude, nor the multitude them, but seem to be mad and to move with laughter, hated and despised, and many times also murdered. 

18. For we have already said that wickedness must dwell here, being her own region. 

19. For her region is the Earth and not this world, as some will sometimes say, blaspheming. 

20. But the godly or God-worshipping man, laying hold of knowledge, will despise or tread under all these things, for though they be evil to other men, yet to him all things are good. 

21. And upon mature consideration, he refers all things to knowledge, and that which is most to be wondered at, he alone makes evil things good. 

22. But I return again to my discourse of sense.

23. It is, therefore, a thing proper to man, to communicate and conjoin sense and understanding.

24. But every man, as I said before, does not enjoy understanding, for one man is material, another essential. 

25. And he that is material with wickedness, as I said, received from the devils the seed of understanding, but they that are with the Good essentially are saved with God. 

26. For God is the Workman of all things, and when he works, he uses Nature. 

27. He makes all things good, like himself. 

28. But these things that are made good are in the use of operartion unlawful. 

29. For the motion of the world stirring up generations makes qualities, infecting some with evilness, and purifying some with good. 

30. And the world, Asclepius, has a peculiar sense and understanding not like to man's. nor so various or manifold, but a better and more simple. 

31. For the sense and understanding of the world is one, in that it makes all things, and unmakes them again into itself, for it is the organ or instrument of the Will of God. 

32. And it is so organised, or framed and made for an instrument by God, that receiving all seeds into itself from God, and keeping them in itself, it makes all things effectually, and dissolving them, renews all things. 

33. And therefore, like a good husbandman of life, when things are dissolved or loosened, he affords by the casting of seed renovation to all things that grow.

34. There is nothing that it - the world - does not beget or bring forth alive, and by its motion, it makes all things alive.

35. And it is at once both the place and the workman of life. 

36. But the bodies are from matter in a different manner, for some are of the earth, some of water, some of air, some of fire, and all are compounded, but some are more compounded and some are more simple. 

37. They that are compounded are the heavier, and they that are less are the higher.

38. And the swiftness of the motion of the world makes the varieties of the qualities of generation, for the spiration or influence, being most frequent, extends unto the bodies' qualities with one fullness, which is of life. 

39. Therefore, God is the Father of the World, but the world is the father of things in the world. 

40. And the world is the Son of God, but things in the world are the sons of the world. 

41. And therefore it is well called the world, that is, an ornament, because it adorns and beautifies all things with the variety of generation and indeficiency of life, which the unweariness of operation and the swiftness of necessity, with the mingling of the elements and the order of things done.

42. Therefore, it is necessarily and properly called the world.

43. For of all living things, both the sense and the understanding come into them from without, inspired by that which compasses them about and continues them.

44. And the world receiving it once from God as soon as it was made, has it still, whatever it once had. 

45. But God is not, as it seems to some who blaspheme through superstition, without sense, and without mind or understanding. 

46. For all things that are, O Asclepius, are in God and made by him, and depend on him, some working by bodies, some moving by a soul-like essence, some quickening by a spirit, and some receiving the things that are weary, and all very fitly. 

47. Or rather, I say, that he has them not, but I declare the truth: he is all things, not receiving them from without, but exhibiting them outwardly. 

48. And this is the sense and understanding of God, to move all things always. 

49. And there shall never be any time when any of those things that are shall fail or be wanting.

50. When I say the things that are, I mean God. For the things that are, God has, and neither is there anything without him, nor he without anything.

51. These things, O Asclepius, will appear to be true, if you understand them, but if you understand them not, incredible. 

52. For to understand is to believe, but not to believe is not to understand. For my speech or words reach not unto the truth, but the mind is great, and being led or conducted for a while by speech is able to attain to the truth.

53. And understanding all things round about, and finding them consonant and agreeable to those things that were delivered and interrupted by speech, believes and, in that good belief, rests. 

54. To them, therefore, that understand the things that have been said of God, they are credible, but to them that understand them not incredible. 

55. And let these, and thus many things, be spoken concerning understanding and sense. 

The End of the Thirteenth Book.