The cosmos first, man second — why man alone is called evil
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Hermes — καὶ ὁ μὲν κόσμος πρῶτος, ὁ δὲ ἄνθρωπος δεύτερον ζῷον μετὰ τὸν κόσμον, πρῶτον δὲ τῶν θνητῶν, τῶν μὲν ἄλλων ζῴων τὸ ἔμψυχον ἔχει· οὐκέτι δὲ μόνον οὐκ ἀγαθός, ἀλλὰ καὶ κακὸς ὡς θνητός. ὁ μὲν γὰρ κόσμος οὐκ ἀγαθὸς ὡς κινητός, οὐ κακὸς δὲ ὡς ἀθάνατος· ὁ δὲ ἄνθρωπος, καὶ ὡς κινητὸς, καὶ ὡς θνητός, κακός.
And the cosmos is first, but man is the second living being after the cosmos, and first of the mortals; he has the ensouled nature in common with the other living beings. Yet he is no longer only not-good, but even evil, as being mortal. For the cosmos is not good, as being movable, but not evil, as being immortal; whereas man, both as movable and as mortal, is evil.
And the cosmos is first, but man is the second living being after the cosmos, and first of mortals; he has the ensouled nature in common with the other animals. Yet he is no longer merely not-good, but even evil, as being mortal. For the cosmos is not good, as being movable, but not evil, as being immortal; whereas man, both as movable and as mortal, is evil.
The treatise now ranks the living, and the ranking is unsparing about our place in it. 'The cosmos is first (ὁ… κόσμος πρῶτος), but man the second living being after the cosmos, and first of the mortals (πρῶτον… τῶν θνητῶν).' Man shares 'the ensouled nature (τὸ ἔμψυχον)' with the animals, but is chief among the things that die. And here the argument reaches its hardest conclusion: man 'is no longer only not-good, but even evil (οὐκέτι… μόνον οὐκ ἀγαθός, ἀλλὰ καὶ κακός), as being mortal.'
The logic is coldly precise, built on the two disqualifiers the treatise has been tracking — movability and mortality. The cosmos is 'not good, as movable (οὐκ ἀγαθὸς ὡς κινητός)' — it fails the test of the Good, which is unchanging — 'but not evil, as immortal (οὐ κακὸς δὲ ὡς ἀθάνατος)': its deathlessness keeps it from evil. Man fails both tests at once: 'both as movable and as mortal, he is evil (καὶ ὡς κινητὸς καὶ ὡς θνητός, κακός).' This is a bleak anthropology, and a deliberately provocative one — it does not mean man is wicked by choice but that man, by his metaphysical position (changing and dying), sits below even the world in the scale of good. Yet the whole treatise has already given the way out: this same mortal, by knowledge, 'obtains a beginning of immortality' and is 'already divine.' Man is the lowest of the divine and the highest of the mortal — evil by nature, deifiable by gnosis. The Key states the diagnosis so starkly precisely because it has the cure.
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