104 HERMES TEISMEGISTUS. 



the Man, phantasy of manhood ; and the child, phantasy 

 of a child; and the youth, phantasy of a youth; and the 

 adult (a), phantasy of an adult ; and the old man, phantasy 

 of an old man. For neither the man is a man, nor the 

 child a child, nor the youth a youth, nor the adult an 

 adult, nor the old man an old man, for being transmuted, 

 both the things previous and those existing are falsified. 

 But these things, understand thus, Son! as also of the 

 falsehoods of these energies from above, dependent (&) 

 from the Truth itself. But this being thus, I say the 

 falsehood to be an operation (c) of the Truth." 



II. OF DEATH. 



FKOM ASCLEPIUS (Meineke, iv. 106 ; Florilegium, 120). 



WE must now speak of Death, for the Death frightens 

 the many as a very great evil through ignorance of the 

 fact. For death becomes dissolution of a defunct body; 

 and also the number of the harmonies (d) of the body being 

 completed. For the harmonization (d) of the body is num- 

 ber. But the body dies when it can no longer support the 

 man. And death is this, the dissolution of body and dis- 

 appearance of bodily sense. 1 



(a) oLv^poi. (b~) v)pry[&wuv. 



(c) ivtpynftK. (d) &pf&tav apftoyyi. 



is a discoiirse with itself without voice, and that streaming from it 

 through the mouth is called speech? But in words again there is 

 affirmation and denial. When, then, this happens in the soul, 

 through thought in silence, what can you call it but opinion? But 

 when opinion, not by itself, but along with sense, is present with 

 anyone as a passion, what can we call it but phantasy? Since, then, 

 speech is true and false, and that the thought of these is a discourse 

 of the soul with itself, but opinion the result of thought, and that 

 what we call phantasy is the mixture of sense with opinion, and 

 these being related to words, some and sometimes these are false." 



1 Here, as elsewhere, Hermes enunciates the Pythagorean axiom 

 that definite number is of the essence of all things. 



The subject of what death consists in, and that it is a destruction? 



