The divine set (16.1–3) runs to some twenty-six qualities and needs no gloss beyond noticing its balance — it weds inner virtues (fearlessness, purity, serenity) to outer ones (charity, non-violence, gentleness), and strength (vigour, fortitude) to softness (modesty, compassion). The demonic set is defined first in miniature (16.4 — hypocrisy, arrogance, self-conceit, anger, harshness, ignorance) and then unfolded at length (16.7–18). Its essence is diagnosed at 16.7: “the demonic know not what is to be done nor what is to be refrained from” — they have lost the very compass of pravṛtti and nivṛtti. From this root failure grow their marks: they deny truth and God (16.8), do fierce deeds for the world’s ruin (16.9), are bound by insatiable hope and driven by lust and anger (16.10–12), hoard wealth by any means (16.13), deify themselves (16.14), and perform even worship as hollow show (16.17). The contrast is not between two tribes of people but between two tendencies alive in every heart — for the guṇas of canto 14 are the soil of both.

“Holding fast to this view, these ruined souls of small intellect and fierce deeds rise up as enemies of the world, for its destruction (kṣayāya jagato’hitāḥ).” The verse describes, with chilling accuracy, the psychology of the ideologue of violence: a nihilism of value married to a certainty of method, producing beings who set themselves against the world. It is the ancient portrait of what a later age calls terrorism — the conviction that, since nothing is sacred, any atrocity is permitted in service of one’s craving or cause. The Gītā names the root: not this or that grievance, but the loss of the sense that the world has truth, ground and God.