8 HERMES TRISMEGISTUS. 



might of the circles, and showed to the downward borne (a) 

 Nature the beautiful form of The God, which [Nature] 

 having beheld, having in itself insatiate beauty and all the 

 energy of the Seven Administrators, and the form (&) of The 

 God, smiled (c) for love, as it were having beheld the image 

 of the very beautiful form of the Man in the water and 

 the shadow (d) on the earth. But He having beheld in 

 the water the form like to Him being in Himself, loved 

 it and willed to dwell with it. But along with the will 

 came energy (e) and begat (/) the irrational form. 



15. But Nature having received (g) the beloved, com- 

 pletely embraced (h) it, and they mingled, for they were 

 enamoured ; and through this, beyond all living upon earth, 



I the Man is twofold, mortal indeed because of the body, 

 {immortal because of the essential^) Man. 1 For being 

 immortal, and having the dominion (Q of all things, he 

 suffers mortal things subject to the fate. Being, then, 

 above the Harmony, he became an harmonious servant. 

 But being masculine-feminine (/), being from a masculine- 

 feminine father, and sleepless, he is dominated by a 

 sleepless. 



16. And after these things my Mind ; " For also I myself 

 love the discourse." But Poemandres says: "This is the 



(a) x,a.ra(pf : pi. (6) ftopQyv. (c) tptilioiasv. ((?) 



(e) hspystx. (/) Jxi/jjw. ((/) 'hctfiovau. (h) 



(i) ovffia&Yi* (&) k^ovaioiv. (I) a.opsvo^'hvg. 



same intervals though not in the same order, being the same mixture 

 as was originally divided in forming the world (see Jowett's " Sum- 

 mary," vol. iii. 578). The Harmony of Man, of his body, of the 

 parts of it, and of the earth, is detailed in the Timseus, 69, 77. It 

 is founded on a complicated system of triangles, which it is not, 

 necessary here to explain. But the Harmony of the soul and body 

 of Man has strict analogy to that of the xwrpos (ibid. 38). 



1 Plato (" Parmenides," 144) says : " The Essence (oval*) belongs- 

 to all beings, although many, and is absent from none of the 

 entities, neither from the least nor from the greatest. This would be 

 foolish to say, for how can the Essence be absent from any entity ? 

 The smallest and greatest, and everywhere being and divisible, were 

 they comminuted as much as possible, yet certainly they are infinite 

 parts of the Essence." 



