SECTION V. OF THE WRITINGS WHICH BEAR THE NAME OF HERMES.

It remains to remove an objection which, though it does not bear directly upon any of the assertions of the learned prelate, may be thought to bear upon the testimony by which I have opposed the first. I have cited the Egyptian priest in Iamblichus as a witness that the learning of his order was held in common under the name of Hermes; and it may be said that the writings which have come down to us under that name, and which some writers of former ages were accustomed to regard as the most ancient monuments of the Egyptian theology, have been shown to be the work of a much later hand, and that a testimony which rests upon the name of Hermes is thereby deprived of its value.¹ To this objection I am the less able to be indifferent, because the proof upon which it rests is that of my ancestor; and I shall endeavour to show that his proof, so far from weakening the testimony of the priest, is in entire agreement with it. NB-58-008 NB-47-006 NB-13-034

The proof is contained in the first of the Exercitationes of my ancestor, and is stated in the words, Probatur librum qui sub nomine Mercurii Trismegisti circumfertur, falsum esse (it is proved that the book which goes about under the name of Mercurius Trismegistus is spurious).²³ It proceeds upon two grounds: the first, that if the book were truly the work of Hermes, either he must have written it in Greek, or some one must have translated it from the Egyptian tongue, and that the style is wholly unlike the language which the Greeks of his age employed; the second, that the book contains matter which no heathen Egyptian, living, as Hermes is supposed to have lived, before Moses, could have possessed, and which is evidently derived from the Christian Scriptures.⁴ I do not presume to add anything to an argument which it would ill become me to defend at length; I desire only to observe what it proves, and what it does not. NB-13-034 NB-58-008

It proves that the book which goes about under the name of Hermes was not written by him. It does not prove, and it does not attempt to prove, that there was no Egyptian Hermes, or that no writings were in ancient times ascribed to him; on the contrary, my ancestor himself declares, Mercurium Aegyptium antiquissimis vixisse temporibus (that Mercury the Egyptian lived in the most ancient times), and rests upon that very antiquity his conclusion that the book cannot be his.⁵ Now if the priest in Iamblichus be heard, the reason why a later book should have been put forth under the name of Hermes is not far to seek: for the ancestors of the priesthood, as he says, inscribed all their own writings with that name, so that the name was the title of a body of learning and not the signature of an author. A later writer who wished his work to pass for Egyptian had only to follow a custom which, upon the priest's own showing, had always made the name of Hermes a thing which might be written upon any book. The proof of my ancestor, therefore, and the testimony of the priest, are so far from being in conflict, that each explains the other: the one shows that the name upon the book is no evidence of its author; the other shows why it was never intended to be.⁶ NB-47-006 NB-58-008

It follows that the testimony of the priest, which I have adduced for the manner in which the learning of the Egyptians was held, is not touched by the detection of the later book, and that it may be received for what it professes, namely, an account of the custom of the order. Whether the writings which in the most ancient times were inscribed with the name of Hermes contained the doctrine which the Mysteries preserved, and how far any part of them survives, are questions which I do not here determine, and which require, for their determination, a larger examination of the testimonies than the limits of a tractate admit.⁷ NB-58-008 NB-44-039