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A Philosophical Dictionary, From the Fr. [by J.g. Gurton].
A Philosophical Dictionary From the Fr - by J.g. Gurton Author:Voltaire Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: how they will be punished for their errors in the day of judgment. In the meantime he patiently bears with them, because he sees, that if they are in error, they... more » err from pure motives of piety." HERMES. Hermes or Ermes, Mercury Trismegislus, or Thaut, Taut, or That. We neglect reading the ancient book of Mercury Trismegistus, and we are not wrong in so doing. To philosophers it has appeared a sublime piece of jargon, and it is perhaps for this reason that they believed it the work of a great Platonist. Nevertheless, in this theological chaos, how many things there are to astonish and subdue the human mind! God, whose triple essence is wisdom, power, and bounty; God, forming the world by his thought, his word; God creating subaltern gods; God commanding these gods to direct the celestial orbs, and to preside over the world; the sun ; the son of God ; man his image in thought; light, his principal work a divine essence;—all these grand and lively images dazzle a subdued imagination. It remains to be known whether this work, as much celebrated as little read, was the work of a Greek or of an Egyptian. St. Augustin hesitates not in believing that it is the work of an Egyptian, who pretended to be descended from the ancient Mercury, from the ancient Thaut, the first legislator of Egypt. It is true that St. Augustin knew no more of the Egyptian than of the Greek ; but in his time it was necessary that we should not doubt that Hermes, from whom we received theology, was an Egyptian sage, probably anterior to the time of Alexander, and one of the priests whom Plato consulted. It has always appeared to me, that the theology of Plato in nothing resembled that of other Greeks, with the exception of Timeus, who had travelled in Egypt, as well as Pythagoras. The Hermes Tri...« less