Foundations and roof

Meaning

II.2.1 likens a search that begins with lofty or completed effects while neglecting their bodily causes to raising a roof without foundations. II.3.1 compares Hermes with an architect: possessing building materials is not enough without knowledge of how to employ them. Hermes therefore learns operative means in imitation of the divine great Physician who made the world. Foundations supply support and order; the roof represents completion that cannot be made intelligible in isolation from what bears it.

The figure criticizes a method of investigation, not a literal construction practice. Finished metals, disembodied abstractions or spectacular effects cannot substitute for the first receptive subject and its active cause. The image's ordinary building vocabulary therefore carries a precise argumentative demand: begin where the proposed work can actually be grounded, and understand its endpoint in relation to that beginning.