34 HERMES TRISMEGISTUS. 



bodies we must pass through, and how many choirs of 

 demons, and continuity and courses of stars, that we may 

 hasten to the One and only God. For The Good is insur- 

 passable, interminable, and endless (a) ; in itself also it is 

 without beginning ; but to us seeming to have as beginning 

 the knowledge (&). The knowledge then does not become 

 a beginning to it, but to us it affords the beginning of that 

 which should be known (c). 



9. Let us lay hold of the beginning, and we shall make 

 way with quickness through everything. For it is alto- 

 gether perverse (d) the abandoning things accustomed and 

 present, to revert to those ancient 1 and pristine. For 

 the things appearing delight, but those appearing not 

 cause difficulty in believing. But the evils are more ap- 

 parent, but the good is obscure to the eyes ; for there is 

 neither form nor figure to it. For this reason it is similar 

 to itself, but to all others dissimilar ; for it is impossible 

 for incorporeal to be apparent (e) to body. 



10. This is the difference of the like from the unlike,, 

 and to the unlike is the shortcoming to the like (/). 2 : 

 For the Monas (Unit) being beginning (g) and root of all 

 things, is in all things as it were root and beginning ; for 

 without beginning is nothing; but beginning is out of 

 nothing but out of itself, since it is beginning of the 

 others. 3 For it is this (beginning) since there happens not 





(a) dr&$. (&) r^v yvaaiv. (c) TOV yvaaQyiaoptevov. (d) 

 (e) (poti/qitoif. (y) vffTtpYiftoi ?rpo$ TO OJ&OIQV. (g} ocp^. 



God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man ; 

 but every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, 

 and enticed " (James i. 14, 15). 



1 " Forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward 

 to the things which are before" (Phil. iii. 13, Eevised Version). 



2 This is extracted by Stobseus (Physica, 306 ; Meineke, i. 81). 



3 Plato enumerated three dp%Ki or beginnings " The God, The 

 Matter, The Idea: By whom, out of which, to which: But the God 

 is Mind of the world, but the Matter that subject to generation 

 and destruction ; and Idea incorporeal Essence in the intelligences 

 and the phantasies of the God," Stobseus (Physica, 309 ; Meineke, 

 i. 8% 



