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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

Reading language

Book I Chapter 41

6.8 · Activity after the soul’s departure

⟨HERMES⟩ Understand it this way, Tat. When the soul has separated from the body, the body itself remains. For as long as it remains, it is acted upon, dissolving and becoming formless; and the body cannot undergo these things without activity. This activity therefore remains with the body after the soul’s separation. Here, then, is the difference between an immortal body and a mortal one: the immortal is constituted from a single matter, the mortal is not; the one acts, the other is acted upon. For everything active rules, while what is acted upon is ruled. What rules, ⟨being⟩ commanding and free, leads; what is enslaved is carried along.¹¹⁰⁶

6.9 · Activity in lifeless things

Activities, ⟨then⟩, act not only upon ensouled bodies, ⟨but⟩ also upon lifeless ones - wood, [the] stones, and other things alike - causing growth, the production of fruit, ripening, destruction, melting, rotting, crumbling, and all similar effects that lifeless bodies can undergo. For “activity,” my child, is the name given to precisely this: whatever it is that happens.¹¹⁰⁷

6.10 · A cosmos always bringing forth

And many things must always come to be - indeed, all things. For the cosmos is never bereft of any of the things that exist; always moving, it conceives existing things within itself, while they themselves will never be exempt from decay. Let every activity therefore be understood as always immortal, whatever it may be and in whatever body.¹¹⁰⁸

6.11 · Kinds of activity

Of activities, some belong to divine bodies, others to perishable ones; some are general, others specific; some belong to genera, others to the parts of each individual. Divine activities are those acting upon everlasting bodies; these are also perfect, since they act upon perfect bodies. Partial activities operate through each genus of living creatures; specific activities act upon each particular existing thing.¹¹⁰⁹

6.12 · More activities than bodies

This argument, then, my child, concludes that everything is full of activities. For if activities must be in bodies, and there are many bodies in the cosmos, I say that activities are more numerous than bodies. Often in one body there is one activity, a second, and a third, apart from the general activities that accompany it. By general activities I mean those that are bodily in the proper sense and occur through perceptions and movements; for without these activities a body cannot be constituted.¹¹¹⁰

6.13 · Activity made perceptible

There are other, specific activities in human souls through skills, knowledge, pursuits, and actions. Perceptions follow activities; or rather, ⟨the⟩ perceptions are the results of activities. Understand, then, my child, the difference between activity ⟨and perception. Activity⟩ is sent from above; perception, being in the body and deriving its being from it, receives the activity and makes it manifest, as though giving it a body.¹¹¹¹

6.14 · Perception and change

That is why I say that perceptions are both bodily and mortal, lasting only as long as the body. Perceptions are born together with the body and die with it. Immortal bodies themselves have no [immortal] perception, being constituted from a substance of that kind. For [bodily] perception is of nothing at all other than an evil or a good that has come to the body, or something that has departed from it again. But there is not ⟨anything⟩ that comes to everlasting bodies or departs from them; hence perception does not arise in them.¹¹¹²

6.15 · Perception in different beings

⟨TAT⟩ Does perception, then, perceive in every body?

⟨HERMES⟩ In every body, my child; activities also act ⟨in⟩ all.

⟨TAT⟩ Even in lifeless things, father?

⟨HERMES⟩ Even in ⟨the⟩ lifeless things, my child. But perceptions differ. Those of rational beings occur with reason; those of irrational beings are bodily only; those of lifeless things are indeed perceptions, but passive ones, occurring only through increase and diminution. Affection and ⟨the⟩ perception depend upon a single summit and are brought to the same point by the activities themselves.¹¹¹³

6.16 · Pain and joy

In ensouled living creatures there are two further activities that accompany perceptions and affections: pain and joy. Without them an ensouled creature, especially a rational one, cannot perceive. That is why I call these forms [forms of the affections] that prevail especially over rational creatures. [Activities act, while perceptions reveal the activities.] These, being bodily, are stirred by the irrational parts of the soul; that is why I say that both are harmful.¹¹¹⁴

6.17 · Pleasure and suffering

For rejoicing, which provides perception with pleasure, immediately proves a cause of many evils for the one who experiences it; pain supplies sharper pangs and sufferings. Both may therefore reasonably be called harmful.

⟨TAT⟩ ⟨But⟩ would the perception of soul and body be the same, father?

⟨HERMES⟩ What do you understand by perception of the soul, my child?¹¹¹⁵

6.18 · Is perception a body?

⟨TAT⟩ Is not the soul incorporeal, while perception would be a body, father, ⟨if⟩ perception happens to be in a body?¹¹¹⁶

⟨HERMES⟩ If we place it in a body, my child, we shall declare it similar to the soul or to activities; for we say that these are in bodies although incorporeal. But perception is neither activity nor soul nor any other incorporeal thing besides those already mentioned. It would therefore not be incorporeal; and if it is not incorporeal, it would be a body. For of existing things, some must be bodies and others incorporeal.¹¹¹⁷

7.1 · Hermes: nature and motion

From Hermes, from the writings To Ammon.

What is moved moves through the activity of the motion that moves the whole. For the nature of the whole provides the whole with movements: one according to its power, the other according to activity. The former passes through the entire cosmos and holds it together from within; the latter extends around it and encloses it from outside. Together they have permeated all things.¹¹¹⁸

7.2 · The formation of the elements

The nature of all things brings forth what comes to be and gives growth to what grows, sowing its own seeds ⟨and⟩ producing generations through movable matter. As it moves, ⟨the⟩ matter grows warm and becomes fire and water, the one vigorous and strong, the other passive. Fire, opposing water, dried out some of the water, and ⟨earth⟩ came to be, borne upon the water. As the drying continued, vapor arose from the three - water ⟨and⟩ earth and fire - and air came to be.¹¹¹⁹

7.3 · Seed, growth, and shape

These came together according to the ratio of harmony, hot with cold and dry with wet. From their breathing together arose breath and seed corresponding to the surrounding breath. When this breath enters the womb, it does not rest within the seed; through its unrest it changes the seed, and as the seed changes it acquires growth and size. With its increase in size it draws to itself an image of a shape and takes shape. Form is borne upon the shape, and through it what is being fashioned into an image receives its image.¹¹²⁰

1106.The text counts dissolution itself as an effect of activity. Its active/passive contrast is then expressed through the political language of ruler and slave. “A single matter” is retained without specifying a heavenly element that this passage does not name.

1107.The list moves between growth and disintegration and is broader than the examples wood and stone alone. Wachsmuth’s “producing fruit” is a correction of the transmitted “bearing fruit.” The redundant article before stones is bracketed as in the edition.

1108.The cosmos is described through pregnancy or conception. The difficult closing clause follows Wachsmuth’s auta, “they themselves,” and phthora, “decay,” without adopting an alternative reference to motion. The contrast is between perishing products and enduring activities.

1109.The classification is not fully consistent as transmitted. The apparatus records proposed additions meant to align its divisions, but Wachsmuth notes that even these do not make them agree. “General,” “partial,” and “specific” preserve the printed terms without reconstructing a tidier taxonomy.

1110.“Bodily” describes where these activities operate. The text earlier calls activities themselves incorporeal. The apparatus proposes “body-forming” in place of “bodily,” but that conjecture is not adopted in the base text.

1111.The longer supplement restores the two sides of the comparison. The image of giving activity a body explains how an otherwise incorporeal operation becomes perceptible.

1112.The two bracketed adjectives are rejected in the printed edition. The claim is that unchanging immortal bodies lack perception understood as awareness of an addition or loss. The following exchange’s general language about “every body” is retained, despite the qualification made here.

1113.Pathos, “affection,” is something undergone. The passage extends aisthēsis, “perception,” to passive bodily response in lifeless things; this is broader than ordinary conscious sensation. The “single summit” is left unspecified in the excerpt.

1114.The rejected sentence interrupts the discussion of pain and joy. With it set aside, “these” and “both” refer back to that pair. The translation displays both the rejected repetition and the rejected sentence, as does the Greek edition.

1115.The teacher evaluates joy and pain through their effects on the embodied subject. Tat’s next question shifts the issue from their value to the ontological status of perception itself.

1116.The repeated Greek article hē, rejected by the editor, has no separate natural English equivalent; its deletion remains visible in the facing Greek. The conditional “if” is an editorial supplement.

1117.The teacher distinguishes being in a body from being a body, then nevertheless concludes that perception is corporeal by excluding it from the incorporeal kinds he has named. The reasoning is retained as printed.

1118.The two movements are distinguished by dynamis, “power,” and energeia, “activity.” Wachsmuth explicitly finds the pronoun autēs, “its,” obscure; the translation refers it provisionally to nature, without emending the Greek.

1119.The repeated root phy- links nature, bringing forth, and growth. The partitive “some of the water” represents the Greek genitive after “dried.” The passage offers an ancient account of elemental generation, with earth and air emerging after fire and water.

1120.Pneuma is rendered “breath,” retaining its connection with sympnoia, “breathing together.” The last sentence distinguishes schēma, shape, from eidos, form, and keeps the printed repetition of eidōlopoiein, “fashion into an image,” rather than the simpler verb proposed in the apparatus.