There is no void — only non-being is empty
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Asclepius — Ἐν κενῷ δὲ δεῖ κινεῖσθαι τὰ κινούμενα, ὦ τρισμέγιστε;
Hermes — Εὖ φῄς, ὦ Ἀσκληπιέ. οὐδὲ ἓν τῶν ὄντων ἐστὶ κενὸν· μόνον δὲ τὸ μὴ ὄν κενόν ἐστι καὶ ξένον τῆς τῆς ὑπάρξεως, τὸ δὲ ὂν οὐκ ἂν ἠδύνατο εἶναι ὄν, εἰ μὴ μεστὸν τῆς ὑπάρξεως ἦν· τὸ γὰρ ὑπάρχον κενὸν οὐδέποτε γενέσθαι δύναται.
Asclepius — Οὐκ ἔστιν οὖν κενά τινα, ὦ τρισμέγιστε, οἷον κάδδος κενὸς καὶ κέραμος κενὸς καὶ φρέαρ κενὸν καὶ ληνὸς καὶ τὰ ἄλλα τὰ παραπλήσια;
Hermes — Φεῦ τῆς πολλῆς πλάνης, ὦ Ἀσκληπιέ. τὰ πληρέστατα καὶ μεστότατα ἡγῇ κενὰ εἶναι;
But must the things that are moved move in a void, O Thrice-greatest? — Well said, O Asclepius. Not one of the things that are is empty; only non-being is empty and alien to existence. Being could not be being, were it not full of existence; for that which exists can never become empty. — Are there not, then, some empty things, O Thrice-greatest — such as an empty jar, an empty pot, an empty well, a wine-vat, and the other things of the like sort? — Alas for your great error, O Asclepius! The fullest and most filled things — do you take them to be empty?
Asclepius asks the atomists' question: must not moved things move in a void? Hermes answers 'Well said' — and then dismantles it. Nothing that exists is empty; only non-being (τὸ μὴ ὄν) is empty and alien to existence. Being could not be being unless it were full of existence; what truly exists can never become empty. Asclepius presses with everyday examples — an empty jar, an empty pot, an empty well, an empty vat. Hermes: 'Alas for your great error! The fullest and most filled things — do you consider them empty?'
The dialogue turns to the void, and Asclepius voices the physicists' intuition: motion needs empty room to move into. Hermes concedes the question is a good one and then refuses its premise altogether. His argument is ontological, not merely physical: κενόν ('empty') belongs only to τὸ μὴ ὄν, non-being. Whatever has ὕπαρξις — real existence — is by that very fact μεστόν, full; being and fullness are the same thing said twice. The interlinear keeps ὄν / μὴ ὄν and κενόν / μεστόν paired so the reader can see the equation the Greek is making: to be is to be full, and only nothing is empty.
Asclepius does what any of us would — he points at the empty jar on the shelf. Hermes' reply is almost a laugh: 'Alas for the great error (φεῦ τῆς πολλῆς πλάνης)!' The vessels you call emptiest are in truth πληρέστατα καὶ μεστότατα, the fullest and most filled — a claim that sounds absurd until II.11 supplies the missing body: air. The passage is the Hermetic version of the ancient horror vacui, but grounded less in physics than in the metaphysics of the earlier sections: a cosmos wholly full because being itself is fullness, leaving no true void for anything — or any God conceived as absence — to hide in.
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