



POEMANDRES. VI. 43 



evil ; nor is any of things being to be lost by Him, having 

 lost which He should be grieved ; for grief is part of eviL 

 Nor is anything superior to Him by which He might be 

 assailed, nor is anything compeer (a) with Him so that He 

 be injured, and for this reason should be in love (6) with 

 it ; nor disobedient with which He should be angry; nor 

 wiser which He might envy. 



2. These things then not existing in His Essence, what 

 remains beside but The Good only? for as none of the evil 

 things in such an Essence, so in none of the others will the 

 Good be found. For in all, things are otherwise, both in 

 the small and in the great, and in those individually, and 

 in this the animal the greater and most powerful of all. 



For things generated (c) are full of passions, the generation , r t 

 itself being subject to passion (d). But where passion is 

 there nowhere is The Good; but where The Good there < 

 nowhere is even one passion. For where day is, nowhere 

 night, but where night, nowhere day. Wherefore impos- 

 sible is it that in generation there be The Good, but in 

 the nongenerate (e) only. For as the common being (/) 

 of all things is bound up in the Matter, so is it also of The 

 Good. In this way the world is good so far as it also 

 makes all things, so as in the part of the making to 

 be good; but in all other things not good. For also it 

 is passible (g), and moveable, and maker of passible 

 things. 



3. In the Man indeed the good is ordered according to 

 comparison with the evil For here that which is not very 

 evil is the good, and that here good is the least particle of 

 the eviL It is impossible then to purify the good here 

 from the evil ; for here the good grows evil (&), and being 

 grown evil no longer remains good, and not having remained 

 becomes eviL In The God alone, therefore, is The Good, 

 or The God Himself is The Good. Only, therefore, 

 Asclepius ! is the name of The Good among men, but the fact 

 itself nowhere, for it is impossible. For the material body 



(a) av^w/oy. (6) epot<r0vjffTou. (c) ygi/j/jrra. (d) 



(e) r$ ec'/svvviTa. (/) fiirovfftoc. (g) Tr&drrrog. (h) 



