LIV. 1. Hence not unreasonably do they say in the

myth that [while] the Soul of Osiris is eternal and indestructible, Typhon often tears his Body in pieces and makes it disappear, and that Isis seeks it wandering and puts it together again.
2. For the Seal and Conceivable-by-the-mind-alone and Qood is superior to destruction and change; but the images which the sensible and corporeal imitates ^ Timttus, 51 A.

834 THRICE-GREATEST HKRlfTO
from it, and the reaaona (logoi) and forma and HkeneaRBB which it reoeives, just aa aeal-impreaaiona in wax, do not last for ever, bat are seized upon by the diaorderi^ and turbulent [elements], expelled hither from the field above, and fighting against the Horns whom lais bringi forth aa the sensible image of that cosmos which mind alone can conceiva
3. Wherefore also [Horns] is said to have a charge of bastardy brought against him by Typhon— of not being pure and unalloyed like his sire, Beason (£ogo$}, itself by itself, unmixed and impassible, but bastardixed with matter on account of the corporeal [element].^
4. Nevertheless, Horns gets the best of it and wins, through Hermes — that is, the Season (Zoffos)^ — ^bearing witness and showing that Nature reflects the [true] Cosmos by changing her forms according to That-whicb- mind-alone-can-conoeive.'
5. For the genesis of Apollo* from Isia and Oairia* that took place while the Qods were still in the womb of Shea, is an enigmatical way of stating that before Uiis [sensible] cosmos became manifest, and Matter was perfected by Beason (Logos), Nature, proving herself imperfect, of herself brought forth her first birth.
6. Wherefore also they say that that God was lame* in the dark, and call him Elder Horns ; for he was not cosmos, but a sort of image and phantasm of the world which was to be.^
» Cy. C, /f., X. (xL) 10; Lftct, iv. 6 (Frag. v.). ' This shows that in one tradition Hennes and Osiria wore identified. » C/. xix. 4. * Sc Horua.
* The sequel I think shows that ** and OBiriB" is a ^Lom ; bat see xiL8.
• Of, Ixii.
^ These two paragraphs are, in my opinion, of the utmost value for the critical investigation of the sources of the ^uaoua Sophia-
THE MYSTERIES OF ISIS AND OSIRIS 885