Page:Margoliouth-BookAppleAscribed-1892.pdf/65

Rh a wall resembles a living animal. — : How does your illustration correspond with the virtues of the few and of the many? — : Have you not learned that knowledge is life and ignorance death? — : Yes. — : The knowledge of the wise man vivifies his actions, whereas the folly of the ignorant mortifies his. — bad ones or not? — : They are not. — : How so? — : The well-doer of the vulgar intends to do good, and takes a wrong path. The evil-doer among them intends evil and carries it out in the wrong way. They are just alike and neither has the advantage. — wasted. Now show the superiority of wisdom without which no actions are profitable. — : Whosoever has seen good, abandoned evil, and entered into goodness has acted in accordance with wisdom; and whosoever has intended good and erred, or intended evil and carried it out, has departed from wisdom. — : This whole subject is clear. Now tell me: To whom was this thing, I mean wisdom, first made clear? — : The minds of men are far from being able to attain to any thing so grand without teaching; just as their eyes are far from seeing without the light of a lamp. — : From whom did the philosophers learn it? — : The heralds and ambassadors of the different ages in the different regions of the globe were constantly summoning mankind thereunto; and the first person on earth to whom that knowledge came by revelation was Hermes. — : Whence came it to Hermes? — : His mind was taken up to heaven and it came to him from the Archangels, who had got it from the record of God. From him it came to the earth, and was received by the sages. — knowledge from the inhabitants of heaven? — : If that knowledge be the truth, it can come from above. — upper part of each thing is better than the lower? The
 * Then are their good actions any better than their
 * I know now in what way their virtues are
 * How am I to know that Hermes obtained that
 * Why? — : Do you not see that the

1892.