God's seeds are few but great — piety is the knowledge of God
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Hermes — Τοῦ γὰρ θεοῦ τὰ σπέρματα ὀλίγα, μεγάλα δὲ καὶ καλὰ καὶ ἀγαθά, ἀρετὴ καὶ σωφροσύνη καὶ εὐσέβεια· εὐσέβεια δέ ἐστι θεοῦ γνῶσις, ὃν ὁ ἐπιγνοὺς πλήρης γενόμενος πάντων τῶν ἀγαθῶν, τὰς νοήσεις θείας ἴσχει, καὶ οὐ τοῖς πολλοῖς ὁμοίας. διὰ τοῦτο οἱ ἐν γνώσει ὄντες οὔτε τοῖς πολλοῖς ἀρέσκουσιν οὔτε οἱ πολλοὶ αὐτοῖς· μεμηνέναι δὲ δοκοῦσι καὶ γέλωτα ὀφλισκάνουσι μισούμενοί τε καὶ καταφρονούμενοι καὶ τάχα που καὶ φονευόμενοι. τὴν γὰρ κακίαν ἐνθάδε δεῖν οἰκεῖν εἴπομεν ἐν τῷ ἑαυτῆς χωρίῳ οὖσαν. χωρίον γὰρ αὐτῆς ἡ γῆ, οὐχ ὁ κόσμος, ὡς ἔνιοί ποτε ἐροῦσι βλασφημοῦντες. ὁ μέν τοι θεοσεβής ἄνθρωπος πάντα ὑποστήσει αισθόμενος τῆς γνώσεως. πάντα γὰρ τῷ τοιούτῳ, κἂν τοῖς ἄλλοις τὰ κακά, ἀγαθά ἐστι· καὶ βουλευόμενος πάντα ἀναφέρει εἰς τὴν γνῶσιν. καὶ τὸ θαυμαστόν, τὰ κακὰ μόνος ἀγαθοποιεῖ.
For the seeds of God are few, but great and beautiful and good: virtue and temperance and piety. And piety is the knowledge of God, whom the one who has come to know, having become full of all the good things, holds thoughts divine and not like the many's. Because of this, those who are in knowledge neither please the many nor the many them; they seem to be mad, and they incur laughter, being hated and despised, and perhaps even murdered. For vice must dwell here, we said, being in its own region. For its region is the earth, not the cosmos, as some will one day say, blaspheming. The god-fearing man, indeed, will endure all things, having perceived knowledge. For to such a one, even if to the others they be evils, they are good; and, deliberating, he refers all things to knowledge. And the wonder of it: the evils he alone makes good.
Against the daemon's crop, the seeds of God: 'few, but great and beautiful and good — virtue and temperance and piety.' And piety is given its Hermetic definition: it is the knowledge of God (θεοῦ γνῶσις). The one who has come to know God is filled with all good things and holds thoughts divine, unlike the many; so those in knowledge please neither the many nor are pleased by them — they seem mad, incur mockery, are hated, despised, perhaps even killed. For vice, Hermes says, must dwell here in its own region — and its region is the earth, not the cosmos, as some will one day say in blasphemy. The god-fearing man endures all things, having perceived knowledge; to such a one, even what are evils to others are goods, and he refers everything to knowledge. And the wonder of it: he alone makes evils good.
The two seeds are now set side by side, and the asymmetry is the point. Against the daemon's teeming crop of crimes, 'the seeds of God are few (ὀλίγα), but great and beautiful and good' — and they are named: 'virtue and temperance and piety (ἀρετὴ καὶ σωφροσύνη καὶ εὐσέβεια).' Three, against a catalogue; but each is 'great.' Then the treatise gives one of them a definition that reorganizes the whole religion around a single word: 'piety is the knowledge of God (εὐσέβεια δέ ἐστι θεοῦ γνῶσις).' Reverence is not sacrifice, not fear, not rite — it is γνῶσις, knowing. To know God is already to worship him rightly; and the one who does 'becomes full of all the good things' and 'holds thoughts divine, not like the many's.'
That gulf between the knower and 'the many (οἱ πολλοί)' is drawn without softening. The knowers 'neither please the many nor the many them'; they 'seem to be mad (μεμηνέναι),' they 'incur laughter,' they are 'hated and despised, and perhaps even murdered (φονευόμενοι).' The Hermetist knows the cost of gnosis in a hostile world — this is the recognizable ancient portrait of the sage the crowd cannot forgive. But the treatise refuses to let that hostility indict the world itself. Here it makes its sharpest correction, and it is cosmological: vice has a place, and the place is not the whole. 'Vice must dwell here, in its own region — and its region is the earth (ἡ γῆ), not the cosmos (οὐχ ὁ κόσμος), as some will one day say, blaspheming.' To call the ordered universe evil is βλασφημία; evil is local, earthbound, not woven into the κόσμος.
The close turns the whole argument inward, to the one who has the divine seed. 'The god-fearing man will endure all things (πάντα ὑποστήσει), having perceived knowledge' — ὑφίστημι, the verb of standing firm under a weight. And then the transvaluation: 'to such a one, even what are evils to others are good,' because 'he refers everything to knowledge (πάντα ἀναφέρει εἰς τὴν γνῶσιν).' γνῶσις is his single measure, and by it the sign of every event is changed. The treatise ends the thought on a deliberate paradox — 'the wonder (τὸ θαυμαστόν)' — that names the power exactly: 'the evils he alone makes good (τὰ κακὰ μόνος ἀγαθοποιεῖ).' Not that he denies the evils, but that knowledge in him works on them as an alchemy; what destroys the many, the knower converts. It is the same claim the Stoic made for the sage and Paul would make for the one who loves God — here grounded in the one Hermetic word for salvation, gnosis.
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