The Mind conceives all thoughts — good from God's seed, evil from the daemon's
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Hermes — ὁ γὰρ νοῦς κύει πάντα τὰ νοήματα, ἀγαθὰ μέν, ὅταν ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ τὰ σπέρματα λάβῃ, ἐναντία δέ, ὅταν ὑπό τινος τῶν δαιμονίων· μηδενὸς μέρους τοῦ κόσμου κενοῦ ὄντος δαίμονος, τῷ ἀπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ κεχωρίσθαι δαίμονα· ὅστις ὑπεισελθὼν ἔσπειρε τῆς ἰδίας ἐνεργείας τὸ σπέρμα, καὶ ἐκύησεν ὁ νοῦς τὸ σπαρέν, μοιχείας, φόνους, πατροτυπίας, ἱεροσυλίας, ἀσεβείας, ἀγχόνας, κατὰ κρημνῶν καταφοράς καὶ ἄλλα πάντα ὅσα κακῶν δαιμόνων ἔργα.
For the Mind conceives all the thoughts: good ones whenever it takes the seeds from God, but contrary ones whenever from some one of the daemonic powers; no part of the cosmos being empty of daemon, in that the daemon has been separated from God — who, having stolen in, sowed the seed of its own working, and the Mind conceived what was sown: adulteries, murders, beatings of fathers, sacrileges, impieties, stranglings, hurlings down from cliffs, and all the other things that are the works of evil daemons.
The seed-image announced at the end of §1 now governs everything. The Mind conceives (κύει) all thoughts: good ones when it takes the seeds from God, but their opposite when from one of the daemonic powers. For no part of the cosmos is empty of daemon — that is, in that the daemon has been separated from God — and such a one, stealing in, sows the seed of its own working, and the Mind conceives what was sown: adulteries, murders, strikings of fathers, sacrileges, impieties, stranglings, hurlings down from cliffs, and all the other things that are the works of evil daemons.
The seed-word from the end of §1 becomes the engine of a whole psychology of good and evil. 'The Mind conceives all the thoughts (ὁ… νοῦς κύει πάντα τὰ νοήματα)' — κύει is the verb of pregnancy, and it makes the mind a womb. What matters is not the womb but the seed sown in it: thoughts are 'good whenever it takes the seeds from God (ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ τὰ σπέρματα),' and their opposite 'whenever from one of the daemonic powers.' The moral life is settled at conception — by whose seed a thought is fathered, not by the mind that carries it.
The cosmology behind this is bleak and precise: 'no part of the cosmos is empty of daemon.' The world is saturated with these powers, and their definition is a fall — the daemon is what 'has been separated from God (ἀπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ κεχωρίσθαι).' Evil is not a rival principle but a separation, a cutting-off; and the separated one 'steals in (ὑπεισελθών)' — the verb of the intruder, the thief who slips in unseen — and 'sows the seed of its own working.' The imagery is exact and unbroken: separation, stealth, sowing, conception.
Then comes the harvest, and the treatise names it without flinching — a catalogue of the crimes the daemon-seed brings to birth: 'adulteries, murders, beatings of fathers, sacrileges, impieties, stranglings, hurlings down from cliffs.' These are 'the works of evil daemons (κακῶν δαιμόνων ἔργα).' The list is not moralizing decoration; it is the argument's proof that a whole class of human thought does not originate in the human at all. The mind that conceives them is not their author but their mother — which is exactly why §3 can turn to the other seed, God's, that is 'few but great,' and to the man who takes it: the one in whom the same womb bears virtue instead.
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