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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

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Book I Chapter 48

Chapter 48: On intellect

On intellect.¹²¹⁶

1 · Plato: the truest knowledge

From Plato, from the Philebus.

For my part, I think that everyone endowed with even a little intellect considers it by far the truest knowledge.¹²¹⁷

2 · Plato: intellect and excellence in the soul

From Plato, from the Phaedo.

Come now, by Zeus: is one soul said to possess intellect and excellence and to be good, while another possesses folly and wickedness and is bad? And are these things truly said?¹²¹⁸

3.1 · Hermes: the question about separation

From Hermes.

⟨TAT⟩ What do you mean by this, father? Intellect separates from soul, and soul from spirit, although you said that soul is the garment of intellect, and spirit the garment of soul?

⟨HERMES⟩ The hearer must think together with the speaker, ⟨my⟩ child, breathe in accord with him, and have a hearing keener than the speaker’s voice.¹²¹⁹

3.2 · The garments of embodied intellect

These garments are combined in an earthen body; for intellect cannot establish itself naked and alone in an earthen body. The earthen body cannot bear so great an immortality, nor can so great an excellence endure a body subject to suffering coming into close contact with it. Intellect ⟨therefore⟩ took soul as a kind of covering. Soul, itself something divine, uses spirit as a servant, and spirit governs the living creature.¹²²⁰

3.3 · The tunic of fire

When, ⟨then⟩, intellect is released from the earthen body, it immediately puts on its own tunic of fire, which it could not wear while dwelling in the earthen body. For earth cannot sustain fire: all earth burns even from a small spark. For this reason water too has been poured around the earth, resisting the flame of fire like a defensive barrier and a wall.¹²²¹

3.4 · Cosmic and human craftsmanship

Intellect, ⟨being⟩ the keenest of all divine thoughts, also has as its body fire, the keenest of all the elements. For intellect, being the craftsman of all things, uses fire as an instrument of its craftsmanship. The intellect of the universe fashions all things, but human intellect only things upon the earth. For the intellect in a human being, stripped of fire, cannot fashion divine things, since it is human by virtue of its dwelling.¹²²²

4.1 · Porphyry: two senses of being generated

From Porphyry, from Starting Points toward the Intelligibles.

Everything generated has the cause of its generation in something else, if indeed nothing comes into being without a cause. But among generated things, those that possess their being through composition would be dissoluble and for that reason perishable. Those, however, that are simple and uncompounded and possess their being in the simplicity of their subsistence are indissoluble and therefore imperishable. They are nevertheless called generated, because they depend upon some cause, not because they are compounded.¹²²³

4.2 · Bodies, soul, and intellect

Bodies, then, are generated in two respects: they depend on the cause that brings them forth, and they are compounded. Soul and intellect are generated only in that they depend on a cause, and not also in that they are compounded. Bodies, therefore, are generated, dissoluble, and perishable. The others are ungenerated in being uncompounded, and in this respect also indissoluble and imperishable; yet they are generated in depending ⟨upon⟩ a cause.¹²²⁴

5.1 · Porphyry: the One before intellect

By the same author.

Intellect is not the principle of all things, for intellect is many, and before the many there must be the One. That intellect is many is clear: it always thinks its objects of thought, which are many, not one, and are not other than itself. If, then, it is identical with them, and they are many, intellect too would be many.¹²²⁵

5.2 · Investigating intellectual contemplation

That it is identical with the intelligibles is shown as follows. If there is something that it contemplates, it will contemplate it either as something it has within itself or as something situated elsewhere. That it does contemplate is clear: intellect would exist together with thinking, and deprived of thinking it is deprived of its being. We must therefore attend to the conditions that occur in acts of cognition and trace out its contemplation. Taken together, the cognitive powers in us are perception, imagination, and intellect.¹²²⁶

5.3 · Perception requires an external object

In every case, what employs perception contemplates by reaching toward external things. It does not become one with what it contemplates, but receives only their imprint through its encounter with them. Thus, when an eye sees the visible object, it cannot become identical with that object: it could not see unless there were a separation. Likewise, even what touches would be destroyed if it became identical with its object. It is clear from this that perception, and what employs perception, always moves outward if it is to apprehend the perceptible object.¹²²⁷

5.4 · Imagination and the outward image

Likewise, imagination too always moves outward, and through its extension the image comes into existence alongside it . . . . . , either also producing from outside, or by the very outward extension indicating the imagination of an image as though it were outside.¹²²⁸ Such is the apprehension of these powers: neither, by turning and gathering into itself, could encounter either a perceptible or an imperceptible form.¹²²⁹

1216.Nous is rendered “intellect” throughout this chapter; logos is normally “reason.” The eight excerpts address different questions about its nature, objects, and relation to soul and body. Decimal subdivisions of longer excerpts are editorial aids for comparing the facing languages. Wachsmuth records that the chapter heading is absent from manuscripts F and P.

1217.Philebus 58a. The excerpt omits the earlier words specifying knowledge of being, reality, and what always remains the same. “It” preserves that dependence on an absent antecedent; the English does not insert the omitted subject into Stobaeus’s Greek. The claim concerns a kind of knowledge, rather than identifying intellect itself as that knowledge.

1218.Phaedo 93b. Socrates is questioning the proposal that soul is a harmony. The contrast between a good and a bad soul forms part of that argument; this excerpt preserves the questions without the answer. Aretē, “excellence,” here has an ethical force alongside goodness and its opposite, wickedness.

1219.The passage corresponds to Corpus Hermeticum X.16-18. Wachsmuth supplies the speaker labels from the parallel Hermetic text, which also supports endyma, “garment,” against dynamis, “power,” in F and P. Pneuma, “spirit,” retains its association with breath, made audible in sympnein, “breathe in accord.” The added Greek vocative particle ō is represented by the marked address in English.

1220.The garments mediate between immortal intellect and a body liable to affection and suffering (pathēton). Aretē here denotes intellect’s excellence, not simply moral virtue. The imagery continues in the fiery tunic below; it distinguishes soul, spirit, and body without making the coverings interchangeable. Wachsmuth restores oun and corrects the pronoun to autēi, referring to the excellence just mentioned.

1221.The tunic is intellect’s own garment after release, unlike the soul and spirit that clothe it during embodiment. The English uses a present tense for the general occurrence; the printed Greek has enedysato, an aorist, after hotan. The claim about earth, fire, and surrounding water belongs to this ancient elemental account. For discussion of the garment imagery, see M. David Litwa, “Corpus Hermeticum 10 cont’d” (2024), on X.16-18.

1222.Oxytatos, “keenest,” links intellect’s penetrative quality with fire’s. The final sentence limits embodied human craftsmanship; it does not deny the preceding distinction between intellect and its earthly dwelling. The translation follows the printed oikēsei, “dwelling,” rather than the parallel Hermetic dioikēsei, “administration,” recorded in the apparatus.

1223.The title is also known as the Sententiae or Aphormai. Genēton, “generated,” is being distinguished into composition from parts and dependence upon a cause. Hypostasis here denotes subsistence, the way a thing has its being. The argument therefore allows something to depend on a cause without being subject to dissolution.

1224.“The others” refers to soul and intellect. Wachsmuth explicitly rejects adding noēta, “intelligibles,” here, since those are not the pair named in the preceding sentence. The apparently opposed predicates “generated” and “ungenerated” apply in the two different respects just defined. The supplied preposition ap’ remains marked.

1225.Archē means an originating principle. The One’s priority is an order of dependence, rather than a claim that it existed earlier in time. Noēmata is rendered “objects of thought”; Wachsmuth retains that word rather than adopting Meineke’s noēta, “intelligibles.” The following argument explains why intellect and its objects are identical.

1226.Theōria, “contemplation,” here means an act of cognitive consideration. The argument treats thinking as constitutive of intellect, rather than an activity it can lose while remaining what it is. Phantasia is the power of forming or receiving appearances and images; “imagination” need not imply deliberate invention.

1227.The contrast is between contact with an object and identity with it. “What touches” takes the middle participle haptomenon as the perceiving subject; it can also be understood passively as the thing touched. In either construal, the sentence argues that eliminating the distinction between the two destroys the conditions of touch.

1228.A gap is printed after paryphistatai. The following participles lack a secure subject in the surviving wording; their awkwardness is retained. Wachsmuth explains tēn by mentally supplying phantasian, represented here by “the imagination.” Usener suggested a missing clause about what uses imagination moving outward, but that conjectural replacement is not inserted. The exact wording and connection remain uncertain.

1229.The two powers are perception and imagination. The point is that their objects are presented as external, even when an image is not a presently perceived thing. The Greek uses oudemia, “none,” where “neither” is expected for the pair, a usage noted by Wachsmuth.