(7) There is nothing in nature wherein there is not good and evil; everything moveth and liveth in this double impulse, working or operation, be it what it will.

(3) But if life is a good, is there good for all that lives?

No: in the vile, life limps: it is like the eye to the dim-sighted; it fails of its task.

But if the mingled strand of life is to us, though entwined with evil, still in the total a good, must not death be an evil?

Evil to What? There must be a subject for the evil: but if the possible subject is no longer among beings, or, still among beings, is devoid of life... why, a stone is not more immune.

If, on the contrary, after death life and soul continue, then death will be no evil but a good; Soul, disembodied, is the freer to ply its own Act.

If it be taken into the All-Soul- what evil can reach it There? And as the Gods are possessed of Good and untouched by evil- so, certainly is the Soul that has preserved its essential character. And if it should lose its purity, the evil it experiences is not in its death but in its life. Suppose it to be under punishment in the lower world, even there the evil thing is its life and not its death; the misfortune is still life, a life of a definite character.

Life is a partnership of a Soul and body; death is the dissolution; in either life or death, then, the Soul will feel itself at home.

But, again, if life is good, how can death be anything but evil?

Remember that the good of life, where it has any good at all, is not due to anything in the partnership but to the repelling of evil by virtue; death, then, must be the greater good.

In a word, life in the body is of itself an evil but the Soul enters its Good through Virtue, not living the life of the Couplement but holding itself apart, even here.

(1) Death said: 'The good is one thing, the pleasant another; these two, having different objects, chain a man. It is well with him who clings to the good; he who chooses the pleasant, misses his end.'

(19) Such a statement as this might be alleged by way of objection. We, however, on our part, will pray the objector to look to the truth of the facts, and will make bold to say this first. The Evil is not from the Good, and if it is from the Good, it is not the Evil. For, it is not the nature of fire to make cold, nor of good to bring into being things not good; and if all things that be are from the Good (for to produce and to preserve is natural to the Good, but to destroy and to dissolve, to the Evil), there is no existing thing from the Evil, nor will the Evil itself be, if it should be evil even to itself. And, if it be not so, the Evil is not altogether evil, but has some portion of the Good, in consequence of which it wholly is. Now, if the things existing desire the Beautiful and Good, and whatever they do, they do for the sake of that which seems good, and every purpose of things existing has the Good for its beginning and end (for nothing looking to the Evil qua evil, does what it does), how shall the Evil be in things existing; or, wholly being, how has it been seduced from such a good yearning? Also if all the things existing are from the Good, and the Good is above all things existing, then there is existing in the Good even the non-existing; but the Evil is not existing; and, if this be not the case, it is not altogether evil, nor non-existing, for the absolutely non-existing will be nothing, unless it should be spoken of as in the Good superessentially. The Good, then, will be fixed far above both the absolutely existing and the non-existing; but the Evil is neither in things existing, nor in things non-existing, but, being further distant from the Good than the non-existing itself, it is alien and more unsubstantial. Where then is the Evil? some one may perchance say. For if the Evil is not,--virtue and vice are the same, both universally and particularly. Or, not even that which opposes itself to virtue will be evil, and yet sobriety and license, and righteousness and unrighteousness, are contraries. And I, by no means, speak in reference to the just and unjust man, and the temperate and intemperate man; but also, long before the difference between the just man and his opposite is made manifest externally, in the very soul itself the vices stand altogether apart from the virtues, and the passions rebel against the reason; and from this we must grant some evil contrary to the Good. For the Good is not contrary to Itself, but as the product from one Source and one Cause, It rejoices in fellowship and unity and friendship. Nor yet is the lesser good opposed to the greater, for neither is the less heat or cold opposed to the greater. The Evil then is in things existing, and is existing, and is opposed, and is in opposition to, the Good; and if it is the destruction of things existing, this does not expel the Evil from existence; but it will be, both itself existing, and generator of things existing. Does not frequently the destruction of one become birth of another? and the Evil will be contributing to the completion of the whole, and supplying through itself non-imperfection to the whole.

(21) But neither is the Evil in things existing. For, if all things existing are from the Good, and the Good is in all things existing, and embraces all, either the Evil will not be in things existing, or it will be in the Good; and certainly it will not be in the Good, for neither is cold in fire, nor to do evil in Him, Who turns even the evil to good. But, if it shall be, how will the Evil be in the Good? If forsooth, from Itself, it is absurd and impossible. For it is not possible, as the infallibility of the Oracles affirms, that a "good tree should bring forth evil fruits," nor certainly, vice versa. But, if not from Itself, it is evident that it will be from another source and cause. For, either the Evil will be from the Good, or the Good from the Evil; or, if this be not possible, both the Good and the Evil will be from another source and cause, for no dual is source, but a Unit will be source of every dual. Further, it is absurd that two entirely contraries should proceed and be from one and the same, and that the self-same source should be, not simplex and unique, but divided and double, and contrary to itself, and be changed; and certainly it is not possible that there should be two contrary sources of things existing, and that these should be contending in each other, and in the whole. For, if this were granted, even Almighty God will not be in repose, nor free from disquietude, if there were indeed something bringing disturbance even to Him. Then, everything will be in disorder, and always fighting; and yet the Good distributes friendship to all existing things, and is celebrated by the holy theologians, both as very Peace, and Giver of Peace. Wherefore, things good are both friendly and harmonious, every one, and products of one life, and marshalled to one good; and kind, and similar, and affable to each other. So that the Evil is not in God, and the Evil is not inspired by God. But neither is the Evil from God, for, either He is not good, or He does good, and produces good things; and, not once in a way, and some; and at another time not, and not all; for this would argue transition and change, even as regards the very Divinest thing of all, the Cause. But, if in God, the Good is sustaining essence, God, when changing from the Good, will be sometimes Being, and sometimes not Being. But, if He has the Good by participation, He will then have it from another; and sometimes He will have it, and sometimes not. The Evil, then, is not from God, nor in God, neither absolutely nor occasionally.

(31) The Cause of things good is One. If the Evil is contrary to the Good, the many causes of the Evil, certainly those productive of things evil, are not principles and powers, but want of power, and want of strength, and a mixing of things dissimilar without proportion. Neither are things evil unmoved, and always in the same condition, but endless and undefined, and borne along in different things, and those endless. The Good will be beginning and end of all, even things evil, for, for the sake of the Good, are all things, both those that are good, and those that are contrary. For we do even these as desiring the Good (for no one does what he does with a view to the Evil), wherefore the Evil has not a subsistence, but a parasitical subsistence, coming into being for the sake of the Good, and not of itself.

(20) Now to all this true reason will answer, that the Evil qua evil makes no single essence or birth, but only, as far as it can, pollutes and destroys the subsistence of things existing. But, if any one says, that it is productive of being, and that by destruction of one it gives birth to another, we must truly answer, that not qua destruction it gives birth, but qua destruction and evil, it destroys and pollutes only, but it becomes birth and essence, by reason of the Good; and the Evil will be destruction indeed, by reason of itself; but producer of birth by reason of the Good; and qua evil, it is neither existing, nor productive of things existing; but, by reason of the Good, it is both existing and good-existing, and productive of things good. Yea, rather (for neither will the same by itself be both good and evil, nor the self-same power be of itself destruction and birth--neither as self-acting power, nor as self-acting destruction), the absolutely Evil is neither existing nor good, nor generative, nor productive of things being and good; but the Good in whatever things it may be perfectly engendered, makes them perfect and pure, and thoroughly good,--but the things which partake of it in a less degree are both imperfectly good, and impure, by reason of the lack of the Good. And (thus) the Evil altogether, is not, nor is good, nor good producing; but that which approaches more or less near the Good will be proportionately good; since the All-perfect Goodness, in passing through all, not only passes to the All-good beings around Itself, but extends Itself to the most remote, by being present to some thoroughly, to others subordinately, but to the rest, in the most remote degree, as each existing thing is able to participate in It. And some things, indeed, participate in the Good entirely, whilst others are deprived of It, in a more or less degree, but others possess a more obscure participation in the Good; and to the rest, the Good is present as a most distant echo. For if the Good were not present according to the capacity of each, the most Divine and honoured would occupy the rank of the lowest. And how were it possible that all should participate in the Good uniformly, when not all are in the same way adapted to its whole participation? Now, this is the exceeding greatness of the power of the Good, that It empowers, both things deprived, and the deprivation of Itself, with a view to the entire participation of itself. And, if one must make bold to speak the truth, even the things fighting against It, both are, and are able to fight, by Its power. Yea rather, in order that I may speak summarily, all things which are, in so far as they are, both are good, and from the Good; but, in so far as they are deprived of the Good, are neither good, nor do they exist. For, even with regard to the other conditions, such as heat or cold, there are things which have been heated, and when the heat has departed from them, many of them are deprived both of life and intelligence (now Almighty God is outside essence, and is, superessentially), and, in one word, with regard to the rest, even when the condition has departed, or has not become completely developed, things exist, and are able to subsist; but that which is every way deprived of the Good, in no way or manner ever was, or is, or will be, nor is able to be. For example, the licentious man, even if he have been deprived of the Good, as regards his irrational lust, in this respect he neither is, nor desires realities, but nevertheless he participates in the Good, in his very obscure echo of union and friendship. And, even Anger participates in the Good, by the very movement and desire to direct and turn the seeming evils to the seeming good. And the very man, who desires the very worst life, as wholly desirous of life and that which seems best to him, by the very fact of desiring, and desiring life, and looking to a best life, participates in the Good. And, if you should entirely take away the Good, there will be neither essence, nor life, nor yearning, nor movement, nor anything else. So that the fact, that birth is born from destruction, is not a power of evil, but a presence of a lesser good, even as disease is a defect of order, not total--for, if this should be, not even the disease itself will continue to exist, but the disease remains and is, by having the lowest possible order of essence, and in this continues to exist as a parasite. For that which is altogether deprived of the Good, is neither existing, nor in things existing; but the compound, by reason of the Good in things existing, and in consequence of this in things existing, is also existing in so far as it participates in the Good. Yea rather, all things existing will so far be, more or less, as they participate in the Good; for, even as respects the self-existing Being, that which in no ways is at all, will not be at all; but that which partially is, but partially is not, in so far as it has fallen from the ever Being, is not; but so far as it has participated in the Being, so far it is, and its whole being, and its non-being, is sustained and preserved. And the Evil,--that which has altogether fallen from the Good--will be good, neither in the more nor in the less; but the partially good, and partially not good, fight no doubt against a certain good, but not against the whole Good, and, even it is sustained by the participation of the Good, and the Good gives essence even to the privation of Itself, wholly by the participation of Itself; for, when the Good has entirely departed, there will be neither anything altogether good, nor compound, nor absolute evil. For, if the Evil is an imperfect good, (then) by the entire absence of the Good, both the imperfect and the perfect Good will be absent; and then only will be, and be seen, the Evil, when on the one hand, it is an evil to those things to which it was opposed, and, on the other, is expelled from other things on account of their goodness. For, it is impossible that the same things, under the same conditions in every respect, should fight against each other. The Evil then is not an actual thing.

(126) Now seeing the outermost birth or geniture in nature is twofold, that is, both evil and good, therefore it is that there is a perpetual tormenting, squeezing, lamenting and howling; and the creatures in this life are subject to torments and afflictions, so that this evil world is justly called a murderous den of the devil.

(3) In this consideration are found two qualities, a good one and an evil one, which are in each other as one thing in this world, in all powers, in the stars and the elements, as also in all the creatures; and no creature in the flesh, in the natural life, can subsist, unless it has the two qualities. What a Quality is.

(5) Good and Bad are not absolute--we call one end of the scale Good and the other Bad, or one end Good and the other Evil, according to the use of the terms. A thing is "less good" than the thing higher in the scale; but that "less good" thing, in turn, is "more good" than the thing next below it--and so on, the "more or less" being regulated by the position on the scale.

(30) But, to speak briefly, the Good is from the one and the whole Cause, but the Evil is from many and partial defects. Almighty God knows the Evil qua good; and, with Him, the causes of the evils are powers producing good. But, if the Evil is eternal, and creates, and has power, and is, and does, whence do these come to it? Is it either from the Good, or by the Good from the Evil, or by both from another cause? Everything that is according to nature comes into being from a defined cause. And if the Evil is without cause, and undefined, it is not according to nature. For there is not in nature what is contrary to nature; nor is there any raison d' etre for want of art in art. Is then the soul cause of things evil, as fire of burning, and does it fill everything that it happens to touch with baseness? Or, is the nature of the soul then good, but, by its energies, exists sometimes in one condition, and sometimes in another? If indeed by nature, even its existence is an evil, and whence then does it derive its existence? Or, is it from the good Cause creative of the whole universe? But, if from this, how is it essentially evil? For good are all things born of this. But if by energies, neither is this invariable, and if not, whence are the virtues? Since it (the soul) comes into being without even seeming good. It remains then that the Evil is a weakness and a falling short of the Good.

(2) But the Universe outside; how is it aligned towards the Good?

The soulless by direction toward Soul: Soul towards the Good itself, through the Intellectual-Principle.

Everything has something of the Good, by virtue of possessing a certain degree of unity and a certain degree of Existence and by participation in Ideal-Form: to the extent of the Unity, Being, and Form which are present, there is a sharing in an image, for the Unity and Existence in which there is participation are no more than images of the Ideal-Form.

With Soul it is different; the First-Soul, that which follows upon the Intellectual-Principle, possesses a life nearer to the Verity and through that Principle is of the nature of good; it will actually possess the Good if it orientate itself towards the Intellectual-Principle, since this follows immediately upon the Good.

In sum, then, life is the Good to the living, and the Intellectual-Principle to what is intellective; so that where there is life with intellection there is a double contact with the Good.

(10) Yet both of these, the good and the evil angels, were made out of the qualities of nature from whence all things existed, only they differ in their qualifying, or in their condition.

(1) What is our answer?

All events and things, good and evil alike, are included under the Universal Reason-Principle of which they are parts- strictly "included" for this Universal Idea does not engender them but encompasses them.

The Reason-Principles are acts or expressions of a Universal Soul; its parts are expressions of these Soulparts.

This unity, Soul, has different parts; the Reason-Principles, correspondingly, will also have their parts, and so, too, will the ultimates of the system, all that they bring into being.

The Souls are in harmony with each other and so, too, are their acts and effects; but it is harmony in the sense of a resultant unity built out of contraries. All things, as they rise from a unity, come back to unity by a sheer need of nature; differences unfold themselves, contraries are produced, but all is drawn into one organized system by the unity at the source.

The principle may be illustrated from the different classes of animal life: there is one genus, horse, though horses among themselves fight and bite and show malice and angry envy: so all the others within the unity of their Kind; and so humanity.

All these types, again, can be ranged under the one Kind, that of living things; objects without life can be thought of under their specific types and then be resumed under the one Kind of the "non-living"; if we choose to go further yet, living and non-living may be included under the one Kind, "Beings," and, further still, under the Source of Being.

Having attached all to this source, we turn to move down again in continuous division: we see the Unity fissuring, as it reaches out into Universality, and yet embracing all in one system so that with all its differentiation it is one multiple living thing- an organism in which each member executes the function of its own nature while it still has its being in that One Whole; fire burns; horse does horse work; men give, each the appropriate act of the peculiar personal quality- and upon the several particular Kinds to which each belongs follow the acts, and the good or evil of the life.

(32) It is to be laid down that being belongs to the Evil as an accident and by reason of something else, and not from its own origin, and thus that that which comes into being appears to be right, because it comes into being for the sake of the Good, but that in reality it is not right for the reason that we think that which is not good to be good. The desired is shewn to be one thing, and that which comes to pass is another. The Evil, then, is beside the path, and beside the mark, and beside nature, and beside cause, and beside beginning, and beside end, and beside limit, and beside intention, and beside purpose. The Evil then is privation and failure, and want of strength, and want of proportion, and want of attainment, and want of purpose; and without beauty, and without life, and without mind, and without reason, and without completeness, and without stability, and without cause, and without limit, and without production; and inactive, and without result, and disordered, and dissimilar, and limitless, and dark, and unessential, and being itself nothing in any manner of way whatever. How, in short, can evil do anything by its mixture with the Good? For that which is altogether without participation in the Good, neither is anything, nor is capable of anything. For, if the Good is both an actual thing and an object of desire, and powerful and effective, how will the contrary to the Good,--that which has been deprived of essence, and intention, and power, and energy,--be capable of anything? Not all things are evil to all, nor the same things evil in every respect. To a demon, evil is to be contrary to the good-like mind--to a soul, to be contrary to reason--to a body, to be contrary to nature.

(1) If both the orders, those on the right and those on the left, are brought together with one another by the thought which is set between them, which gives them their organization with each other, it happens that they both act with the same emulation of their deeds, with those of the right resembling those of the left, and those of the left resembling those of the right. And if at times the evil order begins to do evil in a foolish way, the order emulates, in the form of a man of violence, also doing what is evil, as if it were a power of a man of violence. At other times the foolish order attempts to do good, making itself like it, since the hidden order, too, is zealous to do it. Just as it is in the things which are established, so (it is) in the things which have come to be. Since they bring things unlike one another, those who were not instructed were unable to know the cause of the things which exist. Therefore, they have introduced other types (of explanation), some saying that it is according to providence that the things which exist have their being. These are the people who observe the stability and the conformity of the movement of creation. Others say that it is something alien. These are people who observe the diversity and the lawlessness and the evil of the powers. Others say that the things which exist are what is destined to happen. These are the people who were occupied with this matter. Others say that it is something in accordance with nature. Others say that it is a self-existent. The majority, however, all who have reached as far as the visible elements, do not know anything more than them.

(609) for good certainly will not destroy them, nor again, that which is neither good nor evil. Certainly not. If, then, we find any nature which having this inherent corruption cannot be dissolved or destroyed, we may be certain that of such a nature there is no destruction? That may be assumed. Well, I said, and is there no evil which corrupts the soul? Yes, he said, there are all the evils which we were just now passing in review: unrighteousness, intemperance, cowardice, ignorance. But does any of these dissolve or destroy her?—and here do not let us fall into the error of supposing that the unjust and foolish man, when he is detected, perishes through his own injustice, which is an evil of the soul. Take the analogy of the body: The evil of the body is a disease which wastes and reduces and annihilates the body; and all the things of which we were just now speaking come to annihilation through their own corruption attaching to them and inhering in them and so destroying them. Is not this true? Yes. Consider the soul in like manner. Does the injustice or other evil which exists in the soul waste and consume her? Do they by attaching to the soul and inhering in her at last bring her to death, and so separate her from the body? Certainly not. And yet, I said, it is unreasonable to suppose that anything can perish from without through affection of external evil which could not be destroyed from within by a corruption of its own? It is, he replied.

(8) These two paths— the bright and the dark— are deemed to be the world’s eternal paths. Following the one, a man does not come back, and following the other, he is reborn.

(12) Again, the Cosmos is the first of living things, while man is second after it, though first of things subject to death. Man hath the same ensouling power in him as all the rest of living things; yet is he not only not good, but even evil, for that he's subject unto death. For though the Cosmos also is not good in that it suffers motion, it is not evil, in that it is not subject to death. But man, in that he's subject both to motion and to death, is evil.

(108) But seeing the first three qualities of the earth are congealed or benumbed in death, therefore they remain also a death, and cannot elevate there life into the light, but remain a dark valley, in which there stands God's wrath, death, and hell, as also the eternal prison and source or torment of the devil.