Asclepius

I grant to offer. But among all animals, he alone has raised and exalted [humanity] with sense toward the understanding of divine reason. But because [I have been] reminded about sense, I will explain the reason to you shortly. For it is most holy and great, and not less than that which is the divinity itself. But now I will explain to you what I had begun. For I was saying in the very beginning about the communication of the gods, how humans alone enjoy their dignity. For they have attained the felicity of divine humans only so that they might perceive that intelligent divine sense, which is divine sense only in God and in human intelligence. ASCLEPIUS Is the sense of all humans uniform, O Trismegistus? TRIMEGISTUS Not all, O Asclepius, have attained true intelligence. But they are deceived by great rashness and impulse, following nothing in the spectacle with true reason; which breeds sickness in the minds, and in the best of animals, it produces the nature of wild beasts and the habits of beasts. But about sense, and about all sensible things, and when I can, about spirit, then I will provide the whole reason to you. For man is the only dual animal. And one part of him is simple, which as the Greeks say is OUSIŌDĒS substantial/essential, or what we call the form of divine likeness. It is however quadruple, which the Greeks call hylikon material, from which is the form of the body, from which that which we have already said is divine in man: in which the whole divinity of the mind, alone with its kin, that is, with the senses of a pure mind, rests securely, as if in a wall.