18 HERMES TRISMEGISTUS. 



Asclepius. Some very great thing, Trismegistus ! 



4. Hermes. But of what kind of nature, whether of 

 the opposite, Asclepius ? But to body, opposite nature 

 is the incorporeal. 



Asclepius. It is confessed. 



Hermes. Incorporeal then is the place. But the incor- 

 poreal is either Divine or God. But the Divine I now 

 speak of is not the generated but the ingenerate (a). 



5. If, then, it be Divine, it is essential (&) ; but if it be 

 God it becomes superessential (c). But otherwise it is 

 intelligible (d) thus. For intelligible is the first God to us, 

 not to Himself, for, the intelligible falls under the under- 

 stander (e) by sense. The God then is not intelligible to 

 Himself; for not being something else than that under- 



( stood is He understood by Himself (/). 



6. But to us he is something else, and because of this 

 He is intelligible to us. But if the place is intelligible, 

 it is not therefore God but place ; but if also God it is 

 so, not as being place, but as capacious energy (g). But 

 everything moved is not moved in the thing moved, but 

 in the stable, and that moving it therefore is stable. For 

 it is impossible for it to be moved along with it. 



^ Asclepius. How then, Trismegistus, are things here 

 moved along with those being moved? for the spheres, 



I thou saidst, those errants, are moved by the inerrant Qi) 

 sphere. 1 



Hermes. This is not, Asclepius, motion together (i), 

 but countermotion ; for they are not moved similarly, but 

 contrary wise to each other ; and the contrariety (k) has 

 the resistance of the motion constant (Z). 



7. For the reaction (in) is arrest of progress (n). Where- 

 fore, also, the errant spheres being moved contrary wise to 

 that inerrant by the contrariant opposition, because of 



(a) TO xyiwiriTOi/. (6) ovviabqe. (c) dvovaloiarot/. 



(d) voriTog. (e) ru voovvrt v'Trovt'TrTti. (/) t/<p' sxvrov. 



x,upYirtx,9). (h) d7rhotvov$. (i) 



(I) sffTuaav. (m) j durirvxiot,. (11) 



1 See ch. i. 14, and note there. 



