POEMANDRES. X. 6S 



an instrument towards that Creation. 1 That Mind indeed 

 [Creator] of the Universe uses all things, but that of the 

 Man things upon earth only. For the mind upon earth 

 being destitute of the Fire is unable to create the things 

 Divine, being human in the administration. 



19. But the human soul, not every one but the pious, is 

 a kind of demonhood (a) and divine ; and such a soul after 

 the departure from the body, having striven the strife of 

 this piety (but strife of piety is having known The God 2 

 and to have wronged no man) becomes wholly Mind. But 

 the impious Soul remains in that its proper Essence (b\ 

 punished by itself and seeking an earthly body into which 

 it may enter, being human (c). For other body 3 does not 

 yield place (d) to a human soul ; nor is it justice (e) that 

 a human soul should degrade (/) into a body of an irra- 

 tional animal. For of God is this law, to guard a human 

 Soul from this so great disgrace. 4 



() <$flC/,c40J'/ot T/?. (fy i^ioig ovaia,$. (c) 



(d) YjucT-i. (e) 6sf*,is. (/) 



1 See ante, ch. i. The following section 19 is extracted by Stobseus 

 (Physica, 1007 ; Meineke, i. 307). 



2 Quoted by Lactantius (Divin. Instit., ii. 16, and v. 15 ; see also 

 iii. 9). " This is Life eternal, that they should know Thee The Only 

 True God" (John xvii. 3). 



3 It has been surmised from this passage that Hermes (with Plato) "] 

 held that the souls of the dead generally might pass into other human > 

 bodies. But as to this point, see post contra. 



* Hermes here dissents from Platonism. Plato, speaking as from 

 Socrates (Phsedo, 80), says: "The Soul, the very likeness of the 

 Divine and immortal, and intellectual and uniform, and indissoluble 

 and unchangeable; the Body the likeness of the human, mortal, 

 unintellectual, multiform, dissoluble, and changeable. Must we 

 suppose that the Soul which is invisible, passing to the true Hades, 

 which like her is invisible, and pure and noble, and on her way to 

 the True and Wise God, whither if God will my [soul is also soon 

 to go: that the Soul, if this be her nature and origin, is blown away 

 and perishes immediately on quitting the body as the many say? v 

 That can never be. The truth rather is that that soul which is pure 

 at departing and draws after her no bodily taint, having never volun- 

 tarily been connected with the body, which she is ever avoiding, her- 

 self gathered into herself which has been the study of her life, 



