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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

Reading language

Book I Chapter 41

1.18 · Bodies, forms, and activities

Of things that exist, some are in bodies, some in forms, and some ⟨in⟩ activities. Body is in forms, while form and activity are in body.

The immortal does not share in the mortal, but the mortal shares in the immortal.

The mortal does not enter an immortal body, but the immortal comes into a mortal one.¹⁰⁷⁵

1.19 · The direction of influence

Activities are not directed upward, but downward.

Earthly things bring no benefit to heavenly things; heavenly things bring every benefit to earthly things.

Heaven receives everlasting bodies; earth receives bodies subject to decay.

Earth is irrational; heaven is rational.¹⁰⁷⁶

1.20 · Subordination, providence, and chance

Things in heaven are subordinate; things on earth rest upon the earth.¹⁰⁷⁷

Heaven is the first element; earth is the last element.

Providence is divine order; necessity is the servant of providence.

Chance is disorderly motion, an image of activity, a false opinion.

What is God? Unchanging good. What is the human being? Changing evil.¹⁰⁷⁸

1.21 · Remembering and withholding

If you remember these summary statements, you will easily recall what I explained to you at greater length, for these are summaries of those teachings. Yet decline discussions with the multitude. I do not want you to be grudging; the reason is rather that you will seem ridiculous to many.¹⁰⁷⁹ Like is taken to like, while unlike is never a friend to unlike.

1.22 · Few receptive hearers

These teachings have very few hearers indeed, and perhaps they will not even have those few. They also have a peculiar feature: they provoke the wicked still further toward wickedness. One must therefore be on guard against the multitude, who do not understand the excellence of what is being said.¹⁰⁸⁰

1.23 · The misuse of fate

⟨TAT⟩ What do you mean, father?

⟨HERMES⟩ This, my child. The human creature as a whole inclines more readily toward wickedness and grows up in its company, which is why it takes pleasure in it. If this creature learns that the cosmos came into being and that everything happens according to providence and necessity, with fate ruling all things, it will become far worse than before: it will despise the whole as something generated, attribute the causes of evil to fate, and never refrain from any evil deed. We must therefore guard against them, so that, remaining ignorant, they may be less wicked through fear of what is hidden.¹⁰⁸¹

2.1 · Archytas: two opposed principles

From Archytas, On Principles.¹⁰⁸²

There must [also] be two principles of existing things: one comprising the series of ordered and determinate things, the other the series of disordered and indeterminate things. The first is expressible and rational; it holds existing things together alike, and determines and orders things that do not exist. For, continually extending its reach among things that come to be, it guides everything rationally and rhythmically and, in general, imparts substance and form. The other is irrational and inexpressible; it damages what has been ordered and dissolves what has attained generation and being. For, continually extending its reach among things, it makes them like itself.¹⁰⁸³

2.2 · Form and the underlying material

But since there are two principles dividing things into opposed kinds, one productive of good and the other productive of evil, there must also be two accounts: one of the nature that produces good, the other of the nature that produces evil. For this reason, both things made by art and things produced by nature partake of these two primary factors, form and underlying being. Form is the cause of a thing’s being this particular thing; underlying being is the substrate that receives form.¹⁰⁸⁴

2.3 · The third cause: God

Underlying being cannot partake of form by itself, nor can form on its own come to be in the underlying being. There must instead be some other cause that will move the stuff of things toward form. This cause must be first in power and supreme over the others; it is fitting to call it God. There are therefore now three principles: God, the stuff of things, and form. God is ⟨the⟩ craftsman and mover; the underlying stuff is the matter and what is moved; form is the art and that toward which the mover moves the underlying stuff.¹⁰⁸⁵

2.4 · Proportion unites opposites

But since what is moved contains mutually opposed powers, those of the simple bodies, and opposites require some fitting together and unification, we must bring in the powers of numbers, proportions, and the demonstrations of arithmetic and geometry. These will be able to fit together and unite the opposition in the stuff of things in accordance with form. For the underlying stuff, when left to itself, is formless; but when moved toward form, it becomes formed and possesses the rational structure of its arrangement.¹⁰⁸⁶

2.5 · Beyond intellect

Likewise, the cause of a moved thing’s motion is also its primary mover. There must therefore be three principles: the stuff of things, form, and that which initiates motion from itself and is first in power. Such a principle must be not merely intellect, but something greater than intellect. And that which we call God is plainly greater than intellect.¹⁰⁸⁷

2.6 · Equality and inequality

The account of the equal concerns expressible and rational nature; that of the unequal concerns irrational and inexpressible nature. The latter is the underlying stuff; that is why coming-to-be and passing-away occur in it, and cannot occur without it.¹⁰⁸⁸

3.1 · Porphyry: the sensible and material

From Porphyry’s Starting Points toward the Intelligible.

These are the things truly predicated of the sensible and material: being dispersed in every direction; being changeable; subsisting in otherness; being composite; ⟨not⟩ existing of itself in its own right; being in a place; being observed in extended mass; and all similar characteristics.¹⁰⁸⁹

3.2 · What truly is

Of that which truly is and itself subsists in its own right, these are the predicates: being always established in itself; remaining in the same manner ⟨and⟩ condition; having its being in identity; being unchangeable in essence; being uncompounded; being neither dissoluble nor in a place nor dispersed into extended mass; neither coming to be nor passing away; and all such characteristics. We must hold to these distinctions, interchanging none of them, both when we ourselves speak of their different natures and when we listen to others speak.¹⁰⁹⁰

4.1 · Hermes: the soul’s own being

From Hermes, from the writings To Ammon.

The soul, then, is an incorporeal substance; even when it is in a body, it does not depart from its own essential being. For it is ever-moving in its essence and self-moving in thought, without moving in something, in relation to something, or for the sake of something. It is prior in power, and what is prior has no need of what comes after. “In something,” then, means place, time, and nature; “in relation to something” means harmony, form, and shape; and “for the sake of something” means body. For time, place, and nature exist for the sake of body.¹⁰⁹¹

1075.Idea is rendered “form,” and energeia “activity.” Both terms recur in later excerpts in this chapter. The reciprocal relation of form and body is translated as printed, without replacing “in forms” with “has forms.”

1076.The second saying follows Wachsmuth’s reversal of the transmitted order of the two groups in its affirmative half. The first saying’s downward direction reappears in the later discussion of activities. Phthartikōn is rendered in the sense suggested by its opposition to everlasting bodies; one witness instead has the ordinary word for perishable.

1077.The first saying is defective or obscure: the printed text does not say to what heavenly things are subordinate. Several conjectures are recorded in the apparatus, none adopted here.

1078.The printed dative pronoiāi makes necessity the servant of providence. The apparatus records a nominative variant in one manuscript; the printed reading is followed. In the final contrast, Wachsmuth adopts Usener’s “changing” for the human being.

1079.“Grudging” renders phthonein in the context of withholding knowledge. The transition “rather because” is syntactically incomplete in the Greek; the English supplies its evident argumentative connection without adding a reconstructed clause to the facing text.

1080.The teacher’s warning concerns the effect of teachings on an unprepared audience. The following exchange specifies the feared misunderstanding: using necessity and fate as an excuse for wrongdoing.

1081.This is the teacher’s stated reason for restricting disclosure. “Generated” does not here mean unreal: the danger is that the hearer will infer contempt for the cosmos and immunity from responsibility. The translation preserves that warning without turning it into a general denial of providence.

1082.The title attributes this and excerpt 5 to Archytas’ On Principles. Modern scholarship commonly treats the work as Pseudo-Archytas, a later work under his name. The printed Doric dialect is retained; English does not imitate it with an invented dialect.

1083.Systoichia is a corresponding series or column. The two columns oppose order and limit to disorder and indefiniteness. “Things that do not exist” renders the printed negative without replacing it with “things not yet existing.” Square brackets preserve Wachsmuth’s deletion of kai, “also.”

1084.The Doric ōsia corresponds to ousia, but here it is explicitly the receptive substrate. “Underlying being” marks that usage; in the next passage estō similarly denotes the underlying stuff, subsequently identified with matter. Logos can mean account, reason, or ratio according to context.

1085.The argument adds an active cause to form and receptive matter. “Art” here means the ordering craft or design, not fine art. The supplied article before “craftsman” is marked in both languages.

1086.The simple bodies are the elemental constituents. The text invokes mathematical relations to explain how their opposed powers can be joined into an ordered whole; it does not specify particular ratios here.

1087.The passage identifies the cause of motion with the primary mover, then ranks that cause above intellect. “From itself” describes its initiating power. This is the excerpt’s own hierarchy, not a definition imposed on the neighboring Hermetic texts.

1088.The printed text marks a break before this closing statement. Its equal/unequal opposition recalls the two columns at the beginning. Logos is retained as “account”; the mathematical context also allows the resonance of ratio.

1089.“Sensible” means accessible to sense-perception; “intelligible” means accessible to intellect. The supplied negative is essential to the contrast with what subsists in its own right in the next paragraph. Otherness is opposed there to identity.

1090.The injunction concerns the two contrasting orders just described. The translation keeps the instruction not to transfer their respective predicates from one to the other.

1091.The soul’s motion is denied the conditions that govern bodily motion. The Greek’s “in,” “in relation to,” and “for the sake of” organize the distinctions that follow; the English retains their somewhat unusual application to nature and harmony.