God is not senseless but is all things — to think is to believe (the treatise closes)
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Hermes — Ὁ δὲ θεὸς οὐχ ὥσπερ ἐνίοις δοκεῖ ἀναίσθητός ἐστι καὶ ἀνόητος. ὑπὸ γὰρ δεισιδαιμονίας βλασφημοῦσι. πάντα γὰρ ὅσα ἐστίν, ὦ Ἀσκληπιέ, ταῦτα ἐν τῷ θεῷ ἐστι καὶ ὑπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ γινόμενα καὶ ἐκεῖθεν ἠρτημένα· τὰ μὲν διὰ τῶν σωμάτων ἐνεργοῦντα, τὰ δὲ διὰ οὐσίας ψυχικῆς κινοῦντα, τὰ δὲ διὰ πνεύματος ζωοποιοῦντα, τὰ δὲ τὰ κεκμηκότα ὑποδεχόμενα. καὶ εἰκότως· μᾶλλον δὲ λέγω, ὅτι οὐκ αὐτὸς αὐτὰ ἔχει, ἀλλὰ τὸ ἀληθὲς ἀποφαίνομαι, αὐτὸς ἅπαντά ἐστιν· οὐκ ἔξωθεν αὐτὰ προσλαμβάνων, ἔξω δὲ ἐπιδιδούς, καὶ τοῦτό ἐστιν ἡ αἴσθησις καὶ ἡ νόησις τοῦ θεοῦ, τὸ τὰ πάντα ἀεὶ κινεῖν· καὶ οὐκ ἔσται ποτὲ χρόνος, ὅτε ἀπολειφθήσεταί τι τῶν ὄντων· ὅταν δὲ λέγω τῶν ὄντων, λέγω τοῦ θεοῦ. τὰ γὰρ ὄντα ὁ θεὸς ἔχει, καὶ οὔτε αὐτοῦ οὐδὲν ἐκτὸς οὔτε αὐτὸς ἐκτὸς οὐδενός. Ταῦτά σοι, Ασκληπιέ, ἐννοοῦντι ἀληθῆ δόξειεν, ἀγνοοῦντι δὲ ἄπιστα. τὸ γὰρ νοῆσαί ἐστι τὸ πιστεῦσαι, τὸ ἀπιστῆσαι δὲ τὸ μὴ νοῆσαι. ὁ γὰρ λόγος μου φθάνει μέχρι τῆς ἀληθείας, ὁ δὲ νοῦς μέγας ἐστὶ καὶ ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου μέχρι τινὸς ὁδηγηθείς, φθάνειν ἔχει τῆς ἀληθείας· καὶ περινοήσας τὰ πάντα καὶ εὑρὼν σύμφωνα τοῖς ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου ἑρμηνευθεῖσιν ἐπίστευσε, καὶ ἐν τῇ καλῇ πίστει ἐπανεπαύσατο. τοῖς οὖν τὰ προειρημένα ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ νοήσασι μὲν πιστά, μὴ νοήσασι δὲ ἄπιστα. ταῦτα καὶ τοσαῦτα περὶ νοήσεως καὶ αἰσθήσεως λεγέσθω
But God is not, as it seems to some, without perception and without mind. For out of superstition they blaspheme. For all things that are, O Asclepius, these are in God, and come to be by God, and from there hang depending: some working through the bodies, some moving through psychic substance, some making alive through spirit, and some receiving back the wearied and dead. And rightly so; or rather I say that he himself does not have them, but — to declare the truth — he himself is all things, not taking them on from outside, but giving them outward; and this is the sense-perception and intellection of God: to move all things forever. And there will never be a time when anything of the beings will be left out; and when I say 'of the beings,' I say 'of God.' For God has the beings, and neither is anything of him outside, nor is he himself outside anything. These things, to you considering them, Asclepius, would seem true; but to one ignorant, unbelievable. For to think is to believe, and to disbelieve is not to think. For my reasoning reaches as far as the truth, and the Mind is great, and, guided by reasoning up to a point, is able to reach the truth; and having comprehended all things and found them in accord with the things interpreted by the Word, it believed, and in the fair faith it rested. To those, then, who think the things foretold by God, they are believable; but to those who do not think them, unbelievable. Let these things, and this many, be said concerning thought and sense-perception.
The peroration. God is not, as some suppose, without perception and without mind; it is out of superstition that they blaspheme. For all things that are, Asclepius, are in God and come to be by God and hang depending from him: some working through bodies, some moving through psychic substance, some making alive through spirit, some receiving back the wearied and dead. And rightly so — or rather, Hermes corrects, God does not have these things; the truth is that he himself is all things, not taking them on from outside but giving them out; and this is the sense-perception and intellection of God: to move all things forever. There will never be a time when anything of the beings is left out — and when I say 'of the beings,' I say 'of God.' For God has the beings, and nothing is outside him, nor is he outside anything. These things, to you who consider them, Asclepius, would seem true; to one ignorant, unbelievable. For to think is to believe, and to disbelieve is not to think. My reasoning reaches as far as the truth; and the Mind is great, and, guided by reasoning up to a point, is able to reach the truth — and having comprehended all and found them in accord with what the Word interpreted, it believed, and rested in the fair faith. To those, then, who think the things foretold by God, they are believable; to those who do not think them, unbelievable. Let these and this many things be said concerning thought and sense-perception.
The treatise ends by rounding on a mistake and turning it into its highest doctrine. Some, it says, think God 'without perception and without mind (ἀναίσθητός… καὶ ἀνόητος)' — a strange charge in a book on sense and thought, and Hermes names its source precisely: 'out of superstition (ὑπὸ… δεισιδαιμονίας) they blaspheme.' δεισιδαιμονία, the dread of daemons, is the counterfeit of the εὐσέβεια of §3 that was knowledge of God; false religion is here an epistemic disease, a not-knowing that slanders what it has not understood. Against it Hermes states the immanence in full: 'all things that are, Asclepius, are in God, and come to be by God, and from there hang depending (ἐκεῖθεν ἠρτημένα).' Then a fourfold scheme of how God works — 'through bodies (διὰ τῶν σωμάτων),' 'through psychic substance (διὰ οὐσίας ψυχικῆς),' 'through spirit (διὰ πνεύματος), making alive,' and by 'receiving back the wearied and dead (τὰ κεκμηκότα ὑποδεχόμενα)' — body, soul, spirit, and death, all of them channels of the one activity.
Then comes the correction that is the treatise's peak. 'Or rather I say — he does not have them; the truth is that he himself is all things (αὐτὸς ἅπαντά ἐστιν).' The shift from having to being is everything: God is not a container of the world but its very substance, 'not taking them on from outside but giving them outward.' The direction of divine life is purely donative — nothing flows into God, all flows out. And this outflowing is defined as God's own perceiving and thinking: 'this is the sense-perception and intellection of God: to move all things forever (τὸ τὰ πάντα ἀεὶ κινεῖν).' The whole treatise on αἴσθησις and νόησις resolves here — in God, to sense and to think is simply to move the all, endlessly. Hence nothing can drop out: 'there will never be a time when anything of the beings is left out; and when I say of the beings, I say of God' — τὰ ὄντα and God are coextensive, 'nothing outside him, nor he outside anything.'
The close turns to how such teaching is received, and gives the Hermetic theory of faith. To Asclepius 'considering (ἐννοοῦντι)' these things they seem true; to the ignorant, incredible — because 'to think is to believe, and to disbelieve is not to think (τὸ… νοῆσαί ἐστι τὸ πιστεῦσαι, τὸ ἀπιστῆσαι δὲ τὸ μὴ νοῆσαι).' Faith is not opposed to understanding; it is understanding's own act. And the ascent is mapped: 'my reasoning (λόγος) reaches as far as the truth,' and 'the Mind (νοῦς), great as it is, guided by reasoning up to a point, is able to reach the truth' — the Word leads the Mind to the threshold, and there the Mind, 'having comprehended all things (περινοήσας τὰ πάντα) and found them in accord (σύμφωνα) with what the Word interpreted (ἑρμηνευθεῖσιν), believed, and in the fair faith rested (ἐν τῇ καλῇ πίστει ἐπανεπαύσατο).' The verb ἑρμηνεύω, 'interpret,' is Hermes' own word — the god of interpretation is named in the very act by which truth is construed — and πίστις, faith, is not the leap of the credulous but the repose of a mind that has walked the whole circuit and found it coherent. The book ends on that rest, and on its formula, twice stated for its two audiences: to those who think, believable; to those who do not, unbelievable. 'Let these and this many things be said concerning thought and sense-perception' — the title returns as the seal, and the discourse closes where it began, on the two words it has spent itself proving are, in God, one.
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