(29) "When we consider that he was not only well acquainted with every science, as his works abundantly evince, but that he wrote on almost every subject which is comprehended in the circle of human knowledge, and this with matchless accuracy and skill, we know not which to admire most, the penetration or extent of his mind."

(1) It is necessary that you should become scientific, either by learning from another person, or by discovering yourself the things of which you have a scientific knowledge. If, therefore, you learn from another person, that which you learn is foreign; but what you discover yourself is through yourself, and is your own. Moreover, if you investigate, discovery will be easy, and soon obtained; but if you do not know how to investigate, discovery will be to you impossible. And [right] reasoning indeed, when discovered, causes sedition to cease, and increases concord. For through this the inexhaustible desire of possessing is suppressed, and equality prevails; since by this we obtain what is just in contracts. Hence, on account of this, the poor receive from those who are able to give; and the rich give to those that are in want, both of them believing that through this they shall obtain the equal.

This however will be a rule and an impediment to those that act unjustly, viz. that men who possess scientific knowledge will appease their anger, prior to the commission of an injury, being persuaded that the perpetrators of it will not be concealed when it is committed; but that those who do not possess scientific knowledge, becoming manifest in the commission of an injury, will be restrained from acting unjustly.

(485) not another quality which they should also possess? What quality? Truthfulness: they will never intentionally receive into their mind falsehood, which is their detestation, and they will love the truth. Yes, that may be safely affirmed of them. ‘May be,’ my friend, I replied, is not the word; say rather ‘must be affirmed:’ for he whose nature is amorous of anything cannot help loving all that belongs or is akin to the object of his affections. Right, he said. And is there anything more akin to wisdom than truth? How can there be? Can the same nature be a lover of wisdom and a lover of falsehood? Never. The true lover of learning then must from his earliest youth, as far as in him lies, desire all truth? Assuredly. But then again, as we know by experience, he whose desires are strong in one direction will have them weaker in others; they will be like a stream which has been drawn off into another channel. True. He whose desires are drawn towards knowledge in every form will be absorbed in the pleasures of the soul, and will hardly feel bodily pleasure—I mean, if he be a true philosopher and not a sham one. That is most certain. Such an one is sure to be temperate and the reverse of covetous; for the motives which make another man desirous of having and spending, have no place in his character. Very true.

(13) Thus briefly have been set forth the Field and also knowledge and the object of knowledge. My devotee who understands this becomes worthy of My state.

(490) which is an appearance only, but will go on—the keen edge will not be blunted, nor the force of his desire abate until he have attained the knowledge of the true nature of every essence by a sympathetic and kindred power in the soul, and by that power drawing near and mingling and becoming incorporate with very being, having begotten mind and truth, he will have knowledge and will live and grow truly, and then, and not till then, will he cease from his travail. Nothing, he said, can be more just than such a description of him. And will the love of a lie be any part of a philosopher’s nature? Will he not utterly hate a lie? He will. And when truth is the captain, we cannot suspect any evil of the band which he leads? Impossible. Justice and health of mind will be of the company, and temperance will follow after? True, he replied. Neither is there any reason why I should again set in array the philosopher’s virtues, as you will doubtless remember that courage, magnificence, apprehension, memory, were his natural gifts. And you objected that, although no one could deny what I then said, still, if you leave words and look at facts, the persons who are thus described are some of them manifestly useless, and the greater number utterly depraved; we were then led to enquire into the grounds of these accusations, and have now arrived at the point of asking why are the majority bad, which question of necessity brought us back to the examination and definition of the true philosopher.

(3) For that, in order that a man should be complete in either part, observe that he hath been composed of elements of either part in sets of four;—with hands, and feet, both of them pairs, and with the other members of his body, by means of which he may do service to the lower (that is to say the terrene) world. And to these parts [are added other] four;—of sense, and soul, of memory, and foresight, by means of which he may become acquainted with the rest of things divine, and judge of them. Hence it is brought about that man investigates the differences and qualities, effects and quantities of things, with critical research; yet, as he is held back with the too heavy weight of body’s imperfection, he cannot properly descry the causes of the nature of [all] things which [really] are the true ones.

(8) In his dedication the author and illustrator of the manuscript declares that he has set forth all the operations of the Great Work. He prays to the Holy Spirit that he may be included in the number of those who have pursued this most noble of the sciences and that he may be set always in the path of righteousness. Exclusive of his own researches, the main sources of his information are said to be the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, Raymond Lully, and Arnold of Villa Nova.

(539) character will increase instead of diminishing the honour of the pursuit. Very true, he said. And did we not make special provision for this, when we said that the disciples of philosophy were to be orderly and steadfast, not, as now, any chance aspirant or intruder? Very true. Suppose, I said, the study of philosophy to take the place of gymnastics and to be continued diligently and earnestly and exclusively for twice the number of years which were passed in bodily exercise—will that be enough? Would you say six or four years? he asked. Say five years, I replied; at the end of the time they must be sent down again into the den and compelled to hold any military or other office which young men are qualified to hold: in this way they will get their experience of life, and there will be an opportunity of trying whether, when they are drawn all manner of ways by temptation, they will stand firm or flinch. And how long is this stage of their lives to last? Fifteen years, I answered; and when they have reached fifty years of age, then let those who still survive and have distinguished themselves in every action of their lives and in every branch of knowledge come at last to their consummation: the time has now arrived at which they must raise the eye of the soul to the universal light which lightens all things, and behold the absolute good; for that is the pattern according to which they are to order the State and the

(484) to repair, and having perfect vision of the other world to order the laws about beauty, goodness, justice in this, if not already ordered, and to guard and preserve the order of them—are not such persons, I ask, simply blind? Truly, he replied, they are much in that condition. And shall they be our guardians when there are others who, besides being their equals in experience and falling short of them in no particular of virtue, also know the very truth of each thing? There can be no reason, he said, for rejecting those who have this greatest of all great qualities; they must always have the first place unless they fail in some other respect. Suppose then, I said, that we determine how far they can unite this and the other excellences. By all means. In the first place, as we began by observing, the nature of the philosopher has to be ascertained. We must come to an understanding about him, and, when we have done so, then, if I am not mistaken, we shall also acknowledge that such an union of qualities is possible, and that those in whom they are united, and those only, should be rulers in the State. What do you mean? Let us suppose that philosophical minds always love knowledge of a sort which shows them the eternal nature not varying from generation and corruption. Agreed. And further, I said, let us agree that they are lovers of all true being; there is no part whether greater or less, or more or less honourable, which they are willing to renounce; as we said before of the lover and the man of ambition. True. And if they are to be what we were describing, is there

(5) 3. “Man was generated and constituted, for the purpose of contemplating the reason of the whole of nature, and in order that, being himself the work of wisdom, he might survey the wisdom of the things which exist.—For if the reason of man is contemplative of the reason of the whole of nature, and the wisdom also of man perceives and contemplates the wisdom of the things in existence,—this being acknowledged, it is at the same time demonstrated, that man is a part of universal reason, and of the whole of the intellectual nature.

(1) The Reason of a thesis such as this, O [my] Asclepius, I would that thou should’st grasp, not only with the keen attention of thy soul, but also with its living power [as well]. For ’tis a Reason that most men cannot believe; the Perfect and the True are to be grasped by the more holy minds. Hence, then, will I begin.

(1) The prudent [i. e. the wise] man will especially become so as follows: In the first place, being naturally sagacious, possessing a good memory, and being a lover of labor, he should exercise his dianoetic power immediately from his youth in reasonings and disciplines, and in accurate theories, and adhere to genuine philosophy. But after this he should acquire knowledge and experience in what pertains to the Gods, the laws, and human lives. For there are two things from which the disposition of prudence is produced; one of which consists in obtaining a mathematical and gnostic habit; but the other, in a man perceiving by himself many theorems and things, and understanding other things through a certain different mode. For neither is he sufficient to the possession of prudence, who immediately from his youth has exercised his dianoetic power in reasonings and disciplines; nor he who being destitute of these, has heard and has been conversant with a multitude of things.

But the latter will have his dianoetic power blind, through judging of particulars; and the former through always surveying universals. For as in computations the amount of the whole is obtained by the addition of the parts, thus also in things, reason is able to delineate the theory of universals; but experience has the power of forming a judgment of particulars.

(15) An astronomer who, by his knowledge, can map the stars and describe their courses, derives more pleasure from his knowledge than the chess player from his. Seeing, then, that nothing is higher than God, how great must be the delight which springs from the true knowledge of Him!

(384) It is a faithful person fond of learning who is the worker of the truth.

(16) O that I had but the Pen of Man, and were able therewith to write down the Spirit of Knowledge. I can but stammer of the great Mysteries like a Child that is beginning to speak; so very little can the earthly Tongue express what the Spirit comprehends and understands; yet I will venture to try, whether I may procure some to go about to seek the Pearl, whereby also I might a labour in the Works of God in my paradisical Garden of Roses; for the Longing of the eternal Matrix drives me on to write and exercise myself in this my Knowledge.

(571) is no conceivable folly or crime—not excepting incest or any other unnatural union, or parricide, or the eating of forbidden food—which at such a time, when he has parted company with all shame and sense, a man may not be ready to commit. Most true, he said. But when a man’s pulse is healthy and temperate, and when before going to sleep he has awakened his rational powers, and fed them on noble thoughts and enquiries, collecting himself in meditation; after having first indulged his appetites neither too much nor too little, but just enough to lay them to sleep, and prevent them and their enjoyments and pains from interfering with the higher principle—which he leaves in the solitude of pure abstraction, free to contemplate and aspire to the knowledge of the unknown, whether in past, present, or future: when again he has allayed the passionate element, if he has a quarrel against any one—I say, when, after pacifying the two irrational principles, he rouses up the third, which is reason, before he takes his rest, then, as you know, he attains truth most nearly, and is least

(166) It is not proper to understand that Intelligible One with vehemence, but with the extended flame of far reaching Mind, measuring all things except that Intelligible. But it is requisite to understand this; for if thou inclinest thy Mind thou wilt understand it, not earnestly; but it is becoming to bring with thee a pure and enquiring sense, to extend the void mind of thy Soul to the Intelligible, that thou mayest learn the Intelligible, because it subsisteth beyond Mind.

(4) But we, too, are king when we are moulded to the Intellectual-Principle.

That correspondence may be brought about in two ways: either the radii from that centre are traced upon us to be our law or we are filled full of the Divine Mind, which again may have become to us a thing seen and felt as a presence.

Hence our self-knowing comes to the knowing of all the rest of our being in virtue of this thing patently present; or by that power itself communicating to us its own power of self-knowing; or by our becoming identical with that principle of knowledge.

Thus the self-knower is a double person: there is the one that takes cognisance of the principle in virtue of which understanding occurs in the soul or mind; and there is the higher, knowing himself by the Intellectual-Principle with which he becomes identical: this latter knows the self as no longer man but as a being that has become something other through and through: he has thrown himself as one thing over into the superior order, taking with him only that better part of the soul which alone is winged for the Intellectual Act and gives the man, once established There, the power to appropriate what he has seen.

We can scarcely suppose this understanding faculty to be unaware that it has understanding; that it takes cognisance of things external; that in its judgements it decides by the rules and standards within itself held directly from the Intellectual-Principle; that there is something higher than itself, something which, moreover, it has no need to seek but fully possesses. What can we conceive to escape the self-knowledge of a principle which admittedly knows the place it holds and the work it has to do? It affirms that it springs from Intellectual-Principle whose second and image it is, that it holds all within itself, the universe of things, engraved, so to say, upon it as all is held There by the eternal engraver. Aware so far of itself, can it be supposed to halt at that? Are we to suppose that all we can do is to apply a distinct power of our nature and come thus to awareness of that Intellectual-Principle as aware of itself? Or may we not appropriate that principle- which belongs to us as we to it- and thus attain to awareness, at once, of it and of ourselves? Yes: this is the necessary way if we are to experience the self-knowledge vested in the Intellectual-Principle. And a man becomes Intellectual-Principle when, ignoring all other phases of his being, he sees through that only and sees only that and so knows himself by means of the self- in other words attains the self-knowledge which the Intellectual-Principle possesses.

(2) So, then, although it may do good to few alone, ’tis proper to develope and explain this thesis:—wherefore Divinity hath deigned to share His science and intelligence with men alone. Give ear, accordingly! When God, [our] Sire and Lord, made man, after the Gods, out of an equal mixture of a less pure cosmic part and a divine,—it [naturally] came to pass the imperfections of the cosmic part remained commingled with [our] frames, and other ones [as well], by reason of the food and sustenance we have out of necessity in common with all lives ; by reason of which things it needs must be that the desires, and passions, and other vices, of the mind should occupy the souls of human kind.

(6) Seeing then that my Knowledge has been received by seeking and knocking, I therefore write it down for a Memorial, that I might occasion a Desire in any to seek after them, and thereby my Talent might be improved, and not be hid in the Earth. But I have not written this for those that are wise beforehand, that know all Things, and yet know and comprehend nothing, for they are fully satisfied already, and rich; but I have written it for the Simple, as I am, that I may be refreshed with those that are like myself. Further of the Sulphur, Mercurius, and Sal.