Here the good is only the least of the evil — the body has no room for the Good
Read the full text in our reader
Hermes — ἐν δὲ τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ κατὰ σύγκρισιν τὸ ἀγαθὸν τοῦ κακοῦ τέτακται· τὸ γὰρ μὴ λίαν κακόν, ἐνθάδε τὸ ἀγαθόν ἐστι, τὸ δὲ ἐνθάδε ἀγαθόν, μόριον τοῦ κακοῦ τὸ ἐλάχιστον. ἀδύνατον οὖν τὸ ἀγαθὸν ἐνθάδε καθαρεύειν τῆς κακίας· κακοῦται γὰρ ἐνθάδε τὸ ἀγαθόν· κακούμενον γὰρ οὐκέτι ἀγαθὸν μένει· μὴ μεῖναν δέ, κακὸν γίνεται. ἐν μόνῳ ἄρα τῷ θεῷ τὸ ἀγαθόν ἐστιν, ἢ αὐτός ἐστιν ὁ θεὸς τὸ ἀγαθόν. μόνον οὖν, ὦ ᾿Ασκληπιέ, τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἐν ἀνθρώποις, τὸ δὲ ἔργον οὐδαμοῦ· ἀδύνατον γάρ· οὐ γὰρ χωρεῖ σῶμα ὑλικόν, τὸ παντόθεν ἐσφιγμένον κακίᾳ καὶ πόνοις καὶ ἀλγηδόσι καὶ ἐπιθυμίαις καὶ ὀργαῖς καὶ ἀπάταις καὶ δόξαις ἀνοήτοις. καὶ τὸ πάντων κάκιστόν ἐστιν, ὦ ᾿Ασκληπιέ, ὅτι ἕκαστον τούτων τῶν προειρημένων ἐμπεπίστευται ἐνθάδε τὸ μέγιστον εἶναι ἀγαθόν, τὸ μᾶλλον ἀνυπέρβλητον κακόν. ἡ γαστριμαργία, ἡ τῶν κακῶν πάντων χορηγὸς… ἡ πλάνη ἡ ἀπουσία ἐνθάδε τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἐστι.
In man the good is ranked by comparison with the evil: here the not-very-evil is the good, and the good here is a portion of the evil, the least. It is impossible, then, for the good here to be pure of vice; for here the good is corrupted, and being corrupted no longer remains good, and not remaining, becomes evil. In God alone, then, is the Good — or rather God himself is the Good. Only the name of the good, Asclepius, is among men; the deed nowhere — for it is impossible. For a material body has no room for it, hemmed in on all sides by vice and toils and pains and desires and angers and deceits and foolish opinions. And the worst of all, Asclepius, is that each of these aforesaid is believed here to be the greatest good, the more unsurpassable an evil: gluttony, the supplier of all evils … error, the absence here of the Good.
In man the good is ranked by comparison with the evil: here the not-very-evil is the good, and the good here is a portion of the evil, the least. It is impossible, then, for the good here to be pure of vice; for here the good is corrupted, and being corrupted no longer remains good, and not remaining, becomes evil. In God alone, then, is the Good — or rather God himself is the Good. Only the name of the good, Asclepius, is among men; the deed nowhere — for it is impossible. A material body has no room for it, hemmed in on all sides by vice and toils and pains and desires and angers and deceits and foolish opinions. And the worst of all, Asclepius, is that each of these aforesaid is believed here to be the greatest good, the more unsurpassable an evil: gluttony, the supplier of all evils … error, the absence here of the Good.
Hermes brings the argument down to the human condition, and it is bleak with a purpose. On earth good and evil are not absolutes but a sliding comparison (κατὰ σύγκρισιν): 'the not-very-evil, here, is the good,' and what we call good is really 'a portion of the evil, the least (μόριον τοῦ κακοῦ τὸ ἐλάχιστον).' The best available is merely the smallest dose of the bad. And it cannot stay even that: the good here 'is corrupted (κακοῦται), and being corrupted no longer remains good, and not remaining, becomes evil' — a little chain of decay that the interlinear keeps in its κακ- drumbeat. Earthly good is unstable by nature, always sliding back toward the evil that surrounds it.
So the thesis returns, now proven from the human side: 'in God alone is the Good, or rather God himself is the Good.' Among men there is only 'the name of the good (τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ), the deed nowhere' — a devastating line, that we possess the word for goodness but never the reality. The reason is the body: 'a material body has no room (οὐ χωρεῖ σῶμα ὑλικόν),' being 'hemmed in on all sides (παντόθεν ἐσφιγμένον)' by a crowd of evils the interlinear lists one by one — vice, toils, pains, desires, angers, deceits, foolish opinions. And the deepest tragedy is a matter of misjudgement: 'each of these is believed to be the greatest good,' and the more it is prized the worse it is. The section ends on a mordant pun — gluttony is the 'supplier (χορηγός) of all evils,' the same word VI.1 used for the Good as supplier of all things — and on a definition that will echo through all later theodicy: evil is 'the absence of the Good (ἡ ἀπουσία… τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ),' privation, not a power. (A lacuna in the text is marked with an ellipsis.)
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Corpus Hermeticum CH6.3 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the Corpus Hermeticum — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Corpus Hermeticum CH6.3 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/hermetica/CH6.3/