The Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius: 1.4
Now, man's soul and pneuma is a small world. And this world is complete; its reach does not extend beyond the sensible god - the cosmos. The intelligible world, God, (is) Nous - truly uncreated, intelligible, by its essence uncreated and ineffable, the intelligible Good. To put it once and for all: God is the intelligible world, the unmoved Monad, the invisible world, the intelligible Good, invisible and ineffable.
Translation choices
- "man's soul and pneuma" - literally "man as/qua soul and pneuma", the same grammar construction used for "Man as Form".
- "pneuma" - Mahé uses "breath", but I prefer to use pneuma to emphasise the same word could mean either breath or spirit (likely both).
- "complete" - in the sense of a process that reached completion, perfect
- "reach" - Mahé has "magnitude", could also say "scope". I chose a more abstract word because I believe this refers to the scope of man's perception and influence, not the physical containment of a body within a cosmos.
- "the intelligible world, God, (is) Nous" - the most difficult part of translation here, the original says "the world intelligible and God nous" (because Armenian drops "to be") without indicating which of the previously mentioned worlds the world is. Mahé has "the world is intelligible and God is Nous" which seems a bit disconnected. Since I,1 established that "God is an intelligible world", I read "the intelligible world" here as a reference to God, not a statement about the cosmos.
Definitions
- pneuma - the means by which soul interacts with the body; translated as either "breath" or "spirit" but neither English word captures the full range.
- Nous - the divine intellect; the capacity to perceive truth directly, without reasoning through steps
- uncreated - thus without a beginning
- essence - οὐσία - what something fundamentally is, as opposed to its qualities, appearance, or what it does.
- ineffable - something that is not possible to express with language
- Good - as in Platonic Good, the Form of the Good, that which allows mind to perceive the forms (see Analogy of the Sun in Republic VI) and the ultimate ontological truth
Interpretation
There are multiple sources of confusion here. First, why is it highlighted that it is the soul and pneuma of man in themselves a small world? We know that the soul "has" the Form, so we're not talking about Man as Form.
In any case, the reach of this complete, small, invisible world (soul and pneuma are both invisible) does not extend beyond the cosmos. Here I looked ahead to 3.4 where, in a similar comparison of invisible to visible, we read that God's reach is cosmos.
Next, the jump from man and cosmos to God. Here I had to look ahead to 1.5. In the entirety of Definitions I we seem to be contrasting God with man/Man in all the aspects.
These three points together point for me to the following interpretation: without the addition of Nous, man's inner capacities like perception, and consequently his actions, are limited to the bounds of cosmos. With Nous, however, man can reach the intelligible. This is not spelled out, but hinted at by the contrast with God and bringing up Nous and Good. The Definitions return to this theme later.