(12) Tat: Most clearly hast thou, father mine, set forth the teaching (logos). Hermes: Consider this as well, my son; that these two things God hath bestowed on man beyond all mortal lives - both mind and speech (logos) equal to immortality. He hath the mind for knowing God and uttered speech (logos) for eulogy of Him. And if one useth these for what he ought, he'll differ not a whit from the immortals. Nay, rather, on departing from the body, he will be guided by the twain unto the Choir of Gods and Blessed Ones.

(2) Nor is it without cause the Muses’ choir hath been sent down by Highest Deity unto the host of men; in order that, forsooth, the terrene world should not seem too uncultured, had it lacked the charm of measures, but rather that with songs and praise of men accompanied with music, He might be lauded,—He who alone is all, or is the Sire of all; and so not even on the earths, should there have been an absence of the sweetness of the harmony of heavenly praise.

(13) Tat: Why, father mine! - do not the other lives make use of speech (logos)? Hermes: Nay, son; but use of voice; speech is far different from voice. For speech is general among all men, while voice doth differ in each class of living thing. Tat: But with men also, father mine, according to each race, speech differs. Hermes: Yea, son, but man is one; so also speech is one and is interpreted, and it is found the same in Egypt, and in Persia, and in Greece. Thou seemest, son, to be in ignorance of Reason's (Logos) worth and greatness. For that the Blessed God, Good Daimon, hath declared: "Soul is in Body, Mind in Soul; but Reason (Logos) is in Mind, and Mind in God; and God is Father of [all] these."

(47) Timaeus: was bestowed for the sake of harmony. And harmony, which has motions akin to the revolutions of the Soul within us, was given by the Muses to him who makes intelligent use of the Muses, not as an aid to irrational pleasure, as is now supposed, but as an auxiliary to the inner revolution of the Soul, when it has lost its harmony, to assist in restoring it to order and concord with itself. And because of the unmodulated condition,

(4) 2. “Man was generated by far the wisest of all [terrestrial] animals. For he is able to contemplate the things which exist, and to obtain from all things science and wisdom. To which also it may be added, that divinity has engraved and exhibited in him the system of universal reason, in which all the forms of things in existence are distributed, and the significations of nouns and verbs. For a place is assigned for the sounds of the voice, viz. the pharynx, the mouth, and the nostrils. But as man was generated the instrument of the sounds, through which nouns and verbs are signified, so likewise of the conceptions which are beheld in the things that have an existence. And this appears to me to be the work of wisdom, for the accomplishment of which man was generated and constituted, and received organs and powers from divinity.

(47) Timaeus: the perturbable to the imperturbable; and that, through learning and sharing in calculations which are correct by their nature, by imitation of the absolutely unvarying revolutions of the God we might stabilize the variable revolutions within ourselves. Concerning sound also and hearing, once more we make the same declaration, that they were bestowed by the Gods with the same object and for the same reasons; for it was for these same purposes that speech was ordained, and it makes the greatest contribution thereto; music too, in so far as it uses audible sound,

(9) But on the other hand the virtue of the soul is Gnosis. For he who knows, he good and pious is, and still while on the earth divine. Tat: But who is such an one, O father mine? Hermes: He who doth not say much or lend his ear to much. For he who spendeth time in arguing and hearing arguments, doth shadow-fight. For "God, the Father and the Good", is not to be obtained by speech or hearing. And yet though this is so, there are in all the beings senses, in that they cannot without senses be. But Gnosis is far different from sense. For sense is brought about by that which hath the mastery o'er us, while Gnosis is the end of science, and science is God's gift.

(7) Of qualities I saw the good collector, Hight Dioscorides; and Orpheus saw I, Tully and Livy, and moral Seneca, Euclid, geometrician, and Ptolemy, Galen, Hippocrates, and Avicenna, Averroes, who the great Comment made. I cannot all of them pourtray in full, Because so drives me onward the long theme, That many times the word comes short of fact. The sixfold company in two divides; Another way my sapient Guide conducts me Forth from the quiet to the air that trembles; And to a place I come where nothing shines.

(3) Speech yields the milk, which is the milk of speech itself, to him who knowing this meditates on the sevenfold Sâman in speech. He becomes rich in food, and able to eat food.

(1) What you introduce, however, for the purpose of obtaining a knowledge of these things, whether it be your own opinion, or whether you have heard it from others, is neither true nor rightly asserted. For you say, “ that to speak boastingly, and to exhibit an adumbrative phantasm, are common to Gods and dæmons, and to all the more excellent genera of beings .” But the thing is not as you apprehend it to be. For a God, an angel, and a good dæmon, instruct men in what their proper essence consists; and never use an addition in their language which transcends their power, or their appropriate good. For truth is coexistent with the Gods, in the same manner as light with the sun. And, at the same time, we say, that divinity is not in want of any beauty or virtue which it is possible to add to him through language. Moreover, angels and dæmons always receive truth from the Gods, so that they never assert any thing contrary to this, each of them being essentially perfect, nor can they add any thing to it for the sake of commendation.