11 Hermes.pdf

The Eleventh Book Of the Common Mind to Tat 1. The Mind, O Tat, is of the very Essence of God, if yet there be any Essence of God. 2. What kind of Essence that is, he alone knows himself exactly. 3. The Mind therefore is not cut off, or divided from the essentiality of God, but united as the light of the sun. 4. And this mind in men, is God, and therefore are some men Divine, and their Humanity is near Divinity. 5. For the good Demon called the Gods immortal men, and men mortal Gods. 6. But in the brute Beasts, or unreasonable living wights, the Mind is their Nature. 7. For where there is a Soul, there is the Mind, as where there is Life, there is also a Soul. 8. In living Creatures therefore, that are without Reason, the Soul is Life, void of the perations of the Mind. 9. For the Mind is the Benefactor of the Souls of men, and worketh to the proper Good. 10. And in unreasonable things it co-operateth with the Nature of everyone of them, but in men it worketh against their Natures. 11. For the Soul being in the Body, is straightway made Evil by Sorrow, and Grief and Pleasure or Delight. 12. For Grief and Pleasure flow like Juices from the compound Body, whereinto, when the Soul entereth, or descendeth, she is moistened and tincted with them. 13. As many Souls therefore, as the Mind governeth or overruleth, to them it shows its own Light, resisting their prepossessions or presumptions. 14. As a good Physician grieveth the Body, prepossessed of a disease, by burning or lancing it for healths sake. 15. After the same manner also, the Mind grieveth the Soul, by drawing it out of Pleasure, from whence every disease of the Soul proceedeth. 16. But the great Disease of the Soul is Atheism because that opinion followeth to all Evil and no Good. 17. Therefore the Mind resi