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Reading language

Book I Chapter 47

6.1 · Aristotle: mind and bodily condition

From Aristotle’s Physiognomics.

That mental states follow human beings and do not exist independently, remaining unaffected by the body’s movements, becomes evident in drunkenness and illness: mental states visibly alter greatly under the body’s affections.¹¹⁸⁰ Conversely, the body manifestly shares in the soul’s affections, in cases of love, fear, grief, and pleasure.¹¹⁸¹

6.2 · Natural correspondence and physiognomy

One might see still more clearly in things that develop naturally that body and soul are so related, growing together, that each causes most of the other’s affections. No creature has come into being with the outward form of one animal and the mental disposition of another. Body and soul always belong to the same creature, so that a certain kind of mental disposition necessarily follows a certain kind of body. Moreover, those knowledgeable about each of the other animals can judge it from its appearance: horsemen judge horses, and hunters dogs. If these things are true, physiognomy would be true.¹¹⁸²

7.1 · Plato: the hazards of change

From Plato, Laws, Book VII.

We shall find that change is by far the most hazardous thing in every matter except bad things: in all the seasons, in winds and bodily regimens, and in the dispositions of souls. This applies, so to speak, not in some cases and not others, but in all, apart from the bad things I have just mentioned.¹¹⁸³

7.2 · Bodily habituation

Thus, if one considers bodies, they become accustomed to every kind of food, drink, and exertion. At first disturbed by them, they subsequently grow from these very things, over time, flesh adapted to them. Once friendly with, accustomed to, and familiar with this entire regimen, they fare best in pleasure and health. If a person is ever compelled to change again any of these approved regimens, he is at first thrown into confusion by illnesses; only with difficulty does he eventually settle down, after regaining familiarity with his nourishment.¹¹⁸⁴

7.3 · Reverence for established laws

We must suppose that the same thing happens with people’s mental dispositions and the natures of their souls. When the laws in which they have been brought up remain unmoved through some divine good fortune for a long succession of years, so that no one remembers or has even heard of things ever being otherwise than they are now, the whole soul feels reverence and fears to disturb anything then established.¹¹⁸⁵

8.1 · Hermes: the community of souls

From Hermes, from the discourses To Tat.

⟨HERMES⟩ There is a community of souls: those of the gods share with those of human beings, and human souls with those of irrational beings. The greater care for the lesser: gods for human beings, human beings for irrational [creatures], and God for all.¹¹⁸⁶ The cosmos is therefore subject to God, the human being to the cosmos, and irrational beings to the human being; God is above all and encompasses all.¹¹⁸⁷

8.2 · Divine activities, natures, and arts

God’s activities are like [the] rays; the cosmos has its natures [as its rays]; the human being has arts and sciences.¹¹⁸⁸ The activities operate through the cosmos and reach the human being through the cosmos’s natural causes; the natures act through the elements, and human beings through arts and sciences.¹¹⁸⁹

8.3 · Intellect as the good daemon

This governance of the universe depends upon the nature of ⟨the⟩ One and extends through the one intellect. Nothing is more divine, more active, or more capable of uniting human beings with gods and gods with human beings. This is the good daemon. Hence the soul fullest of it is blessed, while the soul most empty of it is ill-fated.¹¹⁹⁰

8.4 · The good intellect and the soul

⟨TAT⟩ What do you mean by that, father?

⟨HERMES⟩ Do you suppose, child, that every soul possesses the good intellect? It is this that we are discussing now, not the ministering intellect of which we spoke earlier, which is sent down by Justice.¹¹⁹¹ For without ⟨the⟩ intellect the soul “can neither say anything nor do anything.”¹¹⁹² Intellect often withdraws from the soul, and at that time the soul neither sees nor hears, but resembles an irrational animal.

8.5 · Attachment to the body

Such is the power of intellect. It does not even tolerate a sluggish soul, but abandons the soul attached to the body and stifled below by it. Such a soul, child, has no intellect.¹¹⁹³ Hence one should not even regard such a person as human. For the human being is a divine creature, to be compared with none of the other earthly creatures, but with those above in heaven who are called gods.¹¹⁹⁴

8.6 · The reach of the human being

Rather, if we must dare to tell the truth, the truly human being is above those gods; or at any rate they are equal in power. None of the heavenly ⟨gods⟩ will descend to earth, leaving heaven’s boundary. Yet the human being ascends even to heaven and measures it; and, greatest of all, he reaches the heights without even leaving the earth. So great is the extent of his reach.¹¹⁹⁵

8.7 · Mortal god and immortal human

Therefore we must dare to say that the human being ⟨who is⟩ earthly is a mortal god, and the heavenly god an immortal human being. Hence all things ⟨are governed⟩ through these two, cosmos and human being; but all are under the One.¹¹⁹⁶

9.1 · Hermes: the vehicles of the soul

From Hermes, from the discourses To Tat.

The human being is the second living creature after the cosmos, but the first among mortals.

The human soul is carried in this way: intellect in reason, reason in soul, [and] soul in spirit, spirit ⟨in body. Spirit⟩, passing through veins, arteries, and blood, moves the living creature and, as it were, in a certain way sustains it.¹¹⁹⁷

9.2 · Blood, spirit, and bodily death

That is why some suppose the soul to be blood, mistaking its nature. They do not know that, once spirit has withdrawn into the soul, the blood must first coagulate and the veins and arteries be emptied, ⟨and only then⟩ must the living creature cease to live. This is the death of the body.¹¹⁹⁸

1180.Physiognomics 805a1-18, under the traditional attribution to Aristotle. The unexpected “follow human beings” translates the printed tois anthrōpois. Wachsmuth’s apparatus notes that the direct tradition of the treatise has tois sōmasi, “follow bodies,” and calls it correct, but he does not place it in his text.

1181.The opening argument posits reciprocal effects between soul and body. Dianoiai here refers to mental conditions or dispositions, not just individual thoughts. The proposed art of judging character from bodily appearance is named at the excerpt’s close.

1182.Physiognomy is the proposed inference from bodily signs to inner disposition. The passage argues for its possibility from the association of body and soul and from practical judgments about animals; the translation retains the conditional conclusion. Symphyē is the printed dual adjective, referring jointly to body and soul.

1183.Laws 797d-798b. The exception is stated twice: changing bad conditions is excluded from the claim. The following comparison moves from habituation of the body to attachment to long-established laws.

1184.The Greek shifts from plural “bodies” to singular verbs and then to a masculine participant. The English makes that shift explicit with “a person.” Diaita includes the whole manner of bodily living, including exertion, rather than food alone.

1185.The comparison describes the strength of attachment produced by long habituation. “Unmoved” and “disturb” retain the shared language of motion linking a change in regimen with a change in law.

1186.Wachsmuth identifies the Hermetic parallel at Parthey, p. 82. Speaker names, absent from F and P, are supplied from that parallel and remain in angle brackets. Square brackets mark rejected wording, here zōiōn, “creatures.”

1187.The passage distinguishes the singular God from the plural gods and arranges living beings in a hierarchy of care. Koinōnia and koinōnousi express participation or fellowship between souls, not their simple identity.

1188.The comparison with rays extends through a compressed three-part sentence. The square brackets preserve the rejected article before “rays” and the repeated phrase “the rays” after “cosmos,” adapting the latter’s placement to English syntax.

1189.“Natural causes” follows aitiōn, Usener’s correction printed by Wachsmuth, rather than aktinōn, “rays,” in F and P. Energeiai are operative activities or powers; “natures” preserves physeis as the corresponding level within the cosmos.

1190.Nous, “intellect,” is here a divine unifying agency and is called the agathos daimōn, “good daemon.” Kakodaimōn, translated “ill-fated,” echoes the word daimōn and can suggest being attended by a bad daemon. The supplement is the article in “of the One”; its English position is adapted to the construction.

1191.The good intellect is distinguished from an intellect serving Justice. The reference to an earlier discussion belongs to the underlying Hermetic discourse; Stobaeus’s excerpt does not reproduce that entire context.

1192.Wachsmuth identifies the quoted phrase with Theognis 177-178. It is retained here as a brief quotation inside the prose. The supplied article before nous remains marked. The account links effective perception with the presence of intellect, even though it compares the deprived soul to an animal.

1193.Wachsmuth deletes en, “in,” before “the body,” retaining the construction “attached to the body.” The deletion is shown on the Greek page; adding a separate “in” to the English would destroy that construction. Anchomenēn means being choked or strangled, here rendered “stifled.”

1194.The distinction is between ordinary human embodiment and the text’s ideal of fully realized humanity. Its denial of the name “human” to the soul without intellect is part of this spiritual hierarchy.

1195.The movement is an ascent of understanding that does not require departure from the earth. “Reach” translates ektasis, “extension,” the reading printed from the Hermetic parallel. F and P instead have ekstasis, “standing outside oneself”; the translation does not import “ecstasy” into Wachsmuth’s text.

1196.The supplied Greek article restricts the first description to the earthly human being and is represented by “who is.” Wachsmuth also restores the verb “are governed” from the Hermetic parallel. The final clause makes the One supreme over the two mediating terms.

1197.Wachsmuth cites Parthey, p. 75, and separates the opening statement from the following passage. Ocheitai suggests being carried as in a vehicle. Logos is “reason”; pneuma, “spirit,” is the bodily medium described as passing through the vessels. The supplement and rejected de remain marked. The redundant “as it were, in a certain way” follows the printed hōsper tropon tina; conjectures recorded in the apparatus are not adopted.

1198.The account distinguishes soul from blood by placing the withdrawal of spirit before bodily death. “Into the soul” follows the printed direction of withdrawal. The restored words “and then” make the claimed sequence explicit. This is the passage’s ancient physiological explanation.