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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

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Book I Chapter 41

Chapter 41: On nature and the causes arising from it

On nature and the causes arising from it.¹⁰⁵⁵

1.1 · Hermes: piety and understanding

From Hermes, from the work To Tat.¹⁰⁵⁶

⟨HERMES⟩ My child, I write this first both out of love for humanity and out of reverence for God. Nothing could more rightly be called piety [than] understanding the things that exist and acknowledging gratitude for them to their maker. I shall never cease to do this.¹⁰⁵⁷

1.2 · Philosophy and gratitude

⟨TAT⟩ What, then, should one do, father, to live well, if nothing here is true?

⟨HERMES⟩ Practice piety, my child. Whoever practices piety will pursue philosophy to the fullest; for without philosophy it is impossible to be fully pious. One who has learned what things are, how they are ordered, by whom, and for what purpose will feel gratitude for everything to the maker, as to a good father, a kindly nurturer, and a faithful guardian. Whoever acknowledges gratitude will be pious; whoever is pious will know where truth is and what it is, and through that knowledge will become still more pious.¹⁰⁵⁸

1.3 · The soul’s love of the good

For a soul that is in a body, my child, and has lifted itself toward the apprehension of what is truly good and true can never slip toward the opposite. A soul that has come to know its own forefather is seized by a powerful love and forgets every evil; it can no longer depart from the good.¹⁰⁵⁹

1.4 · The road to truth

Let this, my child, be the goal of piety. By reaching it you will both live well and die blessed, since your soul will know where it must fly upward. For this alone, my child, is the road to truth, which our ancestors also traveled, and by traveling it attained the good. This road is venerable and smooth, yet difficult for a soul to travel while it is in a body.¹⁰⁶⁰

1.5 · The inward struggle

First the soul must wage war against itself, bring about a great division, and be overcome by its one part. For one is arrayed against two: the one flees, while the others pull it downward. Great strife and conflict arise between them, the one wishing to escape, the others eager to hold it fast. Victory does not mean the same thing for both sides: the one hastens toward the good, while the others dwell amid evils; the one longs to be set free, while the others cherish slavery.¹⁰⁶¹

1.6 · Victory and ascent

If the two parts are defeated, they remain bereft of themselves and of their ruler; but if the one is defeated, it is swept along by the two, punished by its life here.¹⁰⁶² This, my child, is the contest on the road that leads there. For you must first leave the body behind before the end, my child, and prevail over the life of struggle; having prevailed, then ascend.¹⁰⁶³

1.7 · Summaries: motion and dissolution

Now, my child, I shall go through the things that exist ⟨in⟩ summary statements. You will understand what is said by remembering what you have heard.

Everything that exists moves; only what does not exist is motionless.

Every body can change; not every body can dissolve. [Some bodies can dissolve.]

Not every living being is mortal; not every living being is immortal.

What can dissolve can perish; what remains is unchanging; ⟨what is unchanging⟩ is everlasting.¹⁰⁶⁴

1.8 · Generation and the threefold order

What is always coming into being is also always perishing; what comes into being once never perishes or becomes anything else.

First is God, second the cosmos, third the human being.

The cosmos is for the human being, and the human being for God.¹⁰⁶⁵

1.9 · Soul, substance, and motion

The perceptive part of the soul is mortal, the rational part immortal.

Every substance is immortal; every substance can change.

Everything that exists is twofold; none of the things that exist stands still.

Not everything is moved by soul, yet soul moves everything that exists.¹⁰⁶⁶

1.10 · Perception, pain, and pleasure

Everything that is affected perceives; ⟨not⟩ everything that perceives is affected.

Everything that feels pain also feels pleasure [a mortal living being]; not everything that feels pleasure feels pain [an everlasting living being].

Not every body is subject to disease; every diseased body can dissolve.¹⁰⁶⁷

1.11 · Mind and truth

Intellect is in God; reasoning is in the human being.

Reason is in intellect; intellect is unaffected.

Nothing in a body is true; in what is incorporeal, everything is free from falsehood.

Everything that has come into being can change; not everything that has come into being can perish.¹⁰⁶⁸

1.12 · Goodness and choice

Nothing on earth is good; nothing in heaven is evil.

God is good; the human being is evil.

The good is voluntary; evil is involuntary.

The gods choose good things as good …¹⁰⁶⁹

1.13 · Law, time, and nourishment

Good order is concord with God; good order is law.

Time is divine; law is human.

Evil is the cosmos’s nourishment; time is the human being’s destruction.¹⁰⁷⁰

1.14 · Heaven and earth

Everything ⟨that is⟩ in heaven is unalterable; everything on earth is alterable.

Nothing in heaven is enslaved; nothing on earth is free.

Nothing in heaven is unknown; nothing on earth is known.¹⁰⁷¹

1.15 · Participation and generation

⟨Things in heaven⟩ do not participate ⟨in earthly things;⟩ earthly things ⟨participate⟩ in things in heaven.

Everything in heaven is blameless; everything on earth is blameworthy.

The immortal is not mortal; the mortal is not immortal.

What has been sown does not necessarily come to birth; what comes to birth has necessarily also been sown.¹⁰⁷²

1.16 · The periods and changes of bodies

A body that can dissolve has two periods: from sowing to birth, and from birth to death. An everlasting body has only the period beginning from its coming-to-be.

Bodies that can dissolve grow and diminish.

Matter that can dissolve changes into its opposites [destruction and generation]; everlasting matter changes either into itself or into similar things.¹⁰⁷³

1.17 · Generation and disappearance

Human generation is the beginning of destruction; human destruction is the beginning of generation.

What passes away ⟨also comes into being; what comes into being⟩ also passes away.¹⁰⁷⁴

1055.Wachsmuth’s apparatus reports that the chapter heading is absent from the two principal manuscripts. The title is retained as printed. Numbers after each excerpt number divide the text for facing-page comparison; they are not ancient subdivisions.

1056.The teacher is Hermes and the pupil Tat. The manuscript excerpt lacks speaker labels; Wachsmuth supplies them, and the angle brackets are retained in both languages. The attribution belongs to the Hermetic literary tradition, not to an identifiable historical author named Hermes.

1057.Eusebeia means piety or reverence; here it is expressed through understanding and gratitude. Wachsmuth rejects the comparative particle ē, “than,” because the following genitive already conveys the comparison. The English bracket makes that editorial deletion visible while retaining the comparison’s sense.

1058.Dēmiourgos is the maker or craftsman. The questions concern things’ character, arrangement, agent, and purpose. The sequence joins philosophical inquiry to gratitude and reverence, rather than treating them as separate pursuits.

1059.The verb kouphizein suggests making light or lifting up. Propatōr, “forefather,” names the soul’s originating source in the teacher’s argument. Love and forgetfulness describe the resulting reorientation of the soul.

1060.Telos is the end or goal. The road can be smooth in itself yet difficult for an embodied traveler. The upward flight continues the preceding image of the soul’s elevation.

1061.The passage assumes three parts within the soul but does not name them here. The single aspiring part and the two that drag it downward are therefore left unnamed. Systasis, literally a placing together or array, is used in the context of their conflict.

1062.“Bereft of themselves and of their ruler” follows the difficult printed wording. The apparatus records conjectures involving remaining still or being at peace; these have not been substituted for the base text.

1063.“Before the end” distinguishes the soul’s release while still living from the death already mentioned. In this argument, leaving the body behind is the inward struggle for freedom from its domination.

1064.The summary form is preserved as a sequence of separate sayings. Dissolution, perishability, and change are distinct terms here. Wachsmuth rejects the redundant sentence about some bodies and prints the supplied repeated subject in the last saying.

1065.The contrast is between recurrent generation and a single coming-to-be. Dia with the accusative in the final saying is understood as “for the sake of.” The order printed here is retained.

1066.These compressed sayings contain unresolved tensions. Wachsmuth records proposed changes to the second statement about substance, says he does not understand “twofold,” and prints the final contrast as given here. The translation preserves the affirmative and negative claims without repairing them into a single consistent doctrine.

1067.Paschein can mean being affected or undergoing something, and does not always mean suffering pain. The following saying uses a distinct word for pain. Wachsmuth supplies “not” in the first contrast and rejects the two explanatory labels in the second.

1068.Nous, logismos, and logos are rendered “intellect,” “reasoning,” and “reason” to preserve their distinction in these sayings. “Unaffected” translates apathēs, the absence of undergoing an affection.

1069.The printed gap after the last saying is retained. Meineke proposed supplying a contrast about humans choosing evils as goods; Wachsmuth mentions it in the apparatus but does not put it in the text. The plural “gods” is preserved alongside the preceding singular “God.”

1070.These are the printed readings. The apparatus records proposed “lawlessness” in place of the second “good order,” and questions the contrast between time and law. Trophē, “nourishment,” is Canter’s correction of tryphē, “luxury.” No further repairs have been adopted.

1071.The supplied article is represented by “that is.” These sweeping antitheses belong to the excerpt’s distinction between the heavenly and earthly orders; “known” renders gnōrimon without silently weakening the claim to “fully known.”

1072.Wachsmuth restores the first contrast by comparison with the statement about mortal and immortal below. The English separates the one Greek supplement into corresponding parts to preserve ordinary word order. “Sown” introduces the account of conception and birth that follows.

1073.The everlasting body has a beginning here but no stated terminal point. The distinction therefore concerns duration after coming-to-be, not absence of all generation. Wachsmuth rejects “destruction and generation” as an intrusive explanation.

1074.Archē, “beginning,” serves both halves of the first saying. The second keeps Heeren’s supplied reciprocal clause. The verbs oppose passing away and arising anew.