If Evil exists it must exist either in Gods or minds or souls or bodies.
It does not exist in any god, for all god is good. If any one speaks of
a 'bad mind' he means a mind without mind. If of a bad soul, he will
make soul inferior to body, for no body in itself is evil. If he says
that Evil is made up of soul and body together, it is absurd that
separately they should not be evil, but joined should create evil.
Suppose it is said that there are evil spirits:--if they have their
power from the gods, they cannot be evil; if from elsewhere, the gods do
not make all things. If they do not make all things, then either they
wish to and cannot, or they can and do not wish; neither of which is
consistent with the idea of God. We may see, therefore, from these
arguments, that there is no positive evil in the world.
It is in the activities of men that the evils appear, and that not of
all men nor always. And as to these, if men sinned for the sake of evil,
Nature itself would be evil. But if the adulterer thinks his adultery
bad but his pleasure good, and the murderer thinks the murder bad but
the money he gets by it good, and the man who does evil to an enemy
thinks that to do evil is bad but to punish his enemy good, and if the
soul commits all its sins in that way, then the evils are done for the
sake of goodness. (In the same way, because in a given place light does
not exist, there comes darkness, which has no positive existence.) The
soul sins therefore because, while aiming at good, it makes mistakes
about the good, because it is not Primary Essence. And we see many
things done by the Gods to prevent it from making mistakes and to heal
it when it has made them. Arts and sciences, curses and prayers,
sacrifices and initiations, laws and constitutions, judgements and
punishments, all came into existence for the sake of preventing souls
from sinning; and when they are gone forth from the body gods and
spirits of purification cleanse them of their sins.
XIII. _How things eternal are said to 'be made' (γίγνεσθαι)._
Concerning the Gods and the World and human things this account will
suffice for those who are not able to go through the whole course of
philosophy but yet have not souls beyond help.
It remains to explain how these objects were never made and are never
separated one from another, since we ourselves have said above that the
secondary substances were 'made' by the first.
Everything made is made either by art or by a physical process or
according to some power.[216:1] Now in art or nature the maker must
needs be prior to the made: but the maker, according to power,
constitutes the made absolutely together with itself, since its power is
inseparable from it; as the sun makes light, fire makes heat, snow makes
cold.
Now if the Gods make the world by art, they do not make it _be_, they
make it _be such as it is_. For all art makes the form of the object.
What therefore makes it to be?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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