So many crafts in one matter — what mother, what father, but the unseen God?
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Hermes — ἴδε πόσαι τέχναι μιᾶς ὕλης καὶ πόσα ἔργα μιᾷ περιγραφῇ, καὶ πάντα περικαλλῆ καὶ πάντα μεμετρημένα, πάντα δὲ ἐνδιάφορα. τίς πάντα ταῦτα ἐποίησε; ποία μήτηρ, ποῖος πατήρ, εἰ μὴ ὁ ἀφανὴς θεός, τῷ ἑαυτοῦ θελήματι πάντα δημιουργήσας;
Behold how many crafts are spent upon one matter, and how many works within a single outline — all most beautiful, all measured, yet all distinct. Who made all these? What mother, what father, if not the unseen God, who fashioned all by his own will?
Behold, Hermes says, how many crafts are spent on one matter, how many works within a single outline — all most beautiful, all measured, yet all distinct. Who made all these? What mother, what father, if not the unseen God, who fashioned all by his own will?
A short, exclamatory coda to the anatomy of V.6. Hermes marvels at the economy of the body: 'so many crafts upon one matter (πόσαι τέχναι μιᾶς ὕλης), so many works in one outline (πόσα ἔργα μιᾷ περιγραφῇ)' — a single stuff and a single contour holding a hundred distinct organs, each 'most beautiful and measured, yet all distinct (περικαλλῆ… μεμετρημένα… ἐνδιάφορα).' The interlinear keeps the triad beautiful/measured/distinct because it names the three marks of design at once: beauty, proportion, and differentiated function.
Then the question that has driven the whole treatise since V.3, put now in its most human form: 'what mother, what father (ποία μήτηρ, ποῖος πατήρ), if not the unseen God?' No natural parent authored this; the only adequate cause is the God who 'fashioned all by his own will (τῷ ἑαυτοῦ θελήματι δημιουργήσας).' The phrase θέλημα, 'will,' is the same faculty CH IV.1 named as the mode of creation — God makes not with hands but by willing — and it points ahead: the unseen God is known as the will behind every made thing, the Father read off the child.
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