62 HERMES TRISMEGISTUS. 



good. And the oblivion becomes vice. And the same 

 thing happens to those departing out of the body. 

 f 16. For the Soul recurring back into itself, 1 the Spirit is 

 ! contracted into the blood, and the Soul into the Spirit, but 

 the Mind becoming pure from its garments being divine 

 I by nature, taking a fiery body, circulates in every place,, 

 having abandoned the Soul to judgment and to the punish- 

 ment according to desert. 



Tat. Row speakest thou this, Father ? 2 The Mind 

 is separated from the Soul, and the Soul from the Spirit, 

 thou having said the Soul to be garment of the Mind, but 

 of the Soul the Spirit ? 



17. Hermes. It behoves the hearer to agree in mind, 

 Child I with the speaker, and to consent, and to have his 

 hearing more acute than the voice of the speaker. The 

 composition of these garments, Child! is generate 

 in an earthly body. For it is impossible that the Mind 



i should establish itself by itself naked in an earthly 

 body, for neither is any earthly body able to bear (a) 



I so great immortality nor to endure (5) this such virtue, 

 c v \ a body with passions being under the same skin with 

 it. It hath taken then as it were an envelope (c) the 

 Soul. But the Soul also itself being something divine 

 uses the Spirit as if an envelope. But the Spirit per- 

 vades the Animal. 



18. When then the Mind has departed from the earthly 

 body, it forthwith puts on its own the fiery tunic, which it 

 could not, having to dwell in the earthly body. For earth 

 sustains not fire, for all is enflamed even by a small spark. 

 And because of this the water is diffused around the Earth 

 as rampart and wall resisting against the flame of the fire. 

 Mind however being the most swift of all divine thoughts, 

 and swifter than all the elements, has its body the Fire. 

 For The Mind being Creator of all things, uses the Fire as 



(a) myxfcfv. (6) Kys%taQeu. (c) ^rg|0//3oA^i/. 



1 See post, sec. 21, and note. 



2 The following is extracted "by Stotseus (Physica, 775 ; Meineke, 

 i. 219). 



