Note 13 — THE LIFE, &c.

This inventor of names was called by the Egyptians Theuth, as we are informed by Plato in the Philebus and Phædrus; in the latter of which dialogues, Socrates says: “I have heard, that about Naucratis in Egypt, there was one of the ancient Gods of the Egyptians, to whom a bird was sacred, which they call Ibis; but the name of the dæmon himself was Theuth. According to tradition, this God first discovered number and the art of reckoning, geometry and astronomy, the games of chess and hazard, and likewise letters.” On this passage I observe as follows, in Vol. 3. of my translation of Plato: The genus of disciplines belonging to Mercury, contains gymnastic, music, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and the art of speaking and writing. This God, as he is the source of invention, is called the son of Maia; because investigation, which is implied by Maia, produces invention: and as unfolding the will of Jupiter, who is an intellectual God, he is the cause of mathesis or discipline. He first subsists in Jupiter, the artificer of the world; next among the supermundane Gods; in the third place, among the liberated Gods; fourthly, in the planet Mercury; fifthly, in the Mercurial order of dæmons; sixthly, in human souls, who are the attendants of this God; and in the seventh degree, his properties subsist in certain animals, such as the ibis, the ape, and sagacious dogs. The narration of Socrates in this place, is both allegorical and anagogic or reductory. Naucratis is a region of Egypt eminently subject to the influence of Mercury, though the whole of Egypt is allotted to this divinity. Likewise, in this city a man once florished full of the Mercurial power, because his soul formerly existed in the heavens of the Mercurial order. But he was first called Theuth, that is, Mercury, and a God, because his soul subsisted according to the perfect similitude of this divinity. But afterwards a dæmon, because from the God Mercury, through a Mercurial dæmon, gifts of this kind are transmitted to a Mercurial soul.