: pneumatici or spiritual, psychici or animal, choici or earthy. To each class they ascribed a different origin and destiny. The spiritual were of the seed of Achemoth, and were destined to return in time whence they had sprung -- namely, into the pleroma. Even in this life they are exempted from the possibility of a fall from their high calling; they therefore stand in no need of good works, and have nothing to fear from the contaminations of the world and the flesh. This class consists of course of the Gnostics themselves. The psychici are in a lower position: they have capacities for spiritual life which they must cultivate by good works. They stand in a middle place, and may either rise to the spiritual or sink to the hylic level. In this category stands the Christian Church at large. Lastly, the earthy souls are a mere material emanation, destined to perish: the matter of which they are composed being incapable of salvation (me gar einai ten hylen dektiken soterias). This class contains the multitudes of the merely natural man. Two features claim attention in this the earliest essay towards a complete anthropology within the Christian Church: an extreme spirituality is attributed to "the perfect"; immortality is conditional for the second class of souls, not an intrinsic attribute of all souls. It is probable that originally the terms pneumatici, psychici, and choici denoted at first elements which were observed to exist in all souls, and that it was only by an afterthought that they were employed, according to the respective predominance of these elements in different cases, to represent sup...
