Chapter III

You say, then, “ that he is happy who having learned the scheme of his nativity, and knowing his proper dæmon, is thus liberated from fate .” To me, however, you appear to assert these things in a way neither consonant to themselves nor to truth. For if our proper dæmon is distributed to us from the scheme of our nativity, and from thence we are able to discover him, how can we be liberated from fate , through a knowledge of the dæmon imparted to us by fate? But if, as you say, we are truly liberated from necessity through this dæmon, how is he allotted to us by fate? Thus, therefore, what is now said by you opposes what you before 316 asserted; and is also discordant with truth. For the proper dæmon of every one does not entirely accede from the scheme of the peculiar nativity; but his origin is more ancient than this, which we shall hereafter discuss. To which may be added, that if the descending dæmon was to be alone surveyed from hence, he will not be happy who obtains the knowledge of his genesiurgic dæmon. And who would [willingly] receive this dæmon as his leader to a liberation from fate, if he was given to him for this purpose, that he might accomplish the distributions of fate? Farther still, this appears to me to be only a certain and the last part of the theory pertaining to this dæmon; and that the whole theory of his essence is omitted by a method of this kind. But these things, indeed, though they are falsely asserted, yet at the same time are not utterly foreign from the purpose. The doubts, however, adduced by you in the next place, concerning “ the enumeration of the canons and the genethlialogical science ,” as they are inscrutable, are not attended with any ambiguity in the present discussion. For whether these arts are known or are incomprehensible, yet, at the same time, the efflux from the stars distributes to us the dæmon, whether we know it or not. But divine divination is able to teach us concerning 317 the stars, in a way which is most true, and [when we are in possession of this] we are not entirely in want of the enumeration of canons, or of the divining art.