THE celebrated Plutarch, historian, philosopher, and priest of Apollo, in the first century of the Christian era, thus writes: "We ought not to believe that the Principles of the universe are not animated, as Democrite and Epicure thought; nor that an inert matter be organized, and ordained by a Providence that disposes of all, as the Stoicians taught. It is impossible that one sole being, either good or bad, be the author of all, for God can cause no evil. The harmony of the world is a combination of contraries like the strings of a lyre, or like the string of a bow capable of being bent and unbent. In no case, the poet Euripedes says, good is separated from evil: there must be a mixture of the one and of the other. This opinion is of immemorial antiquity, and has been held by theologians, legislators, poets, and philosophers. Its inventor is unknown, but it is verified by the traditions of mankind; it is consecrated by mysteries and sacrifices among the Barbarians, as well as among the Greeks. They all acknowledge the dogma of two opposite Principles in nature, who, by their opposition, produce the mixture of good and evil. "Therefore it may not be said, that a single dispenser draws events like a liquor from two casks to mix them together; for this mixture is found in all the phenomena of nature. We must admit two opposite causes, two contrary powers, bearing the one to the right, and the other to the left; and who thus govern our life and the whole sublunar world, which for this reason is subject to all the irregularities and vicissitudes we witness, for nothing is done without a cause. As the good cannot produce evil, then there is a principle causing evil, as one causing good." We see by this passage of Plutarch, that the true origin of two Principles proceeds from the difficulty which men, in all times, found in explaining, by one sole cause, good and evil in nature, and in making flow from one sole spring, virtue and crime, light and darkness. "This dogma," Plutarch adds, "has been admitted by nearly all nations, and more especially by those renowned by their wisdom. They believed in two gods of different trade, if I may say so, who caused, the one good, and the other evil. They called the first God by excellence, and the second Demon." In fact the Persians, disciples of Zoroaster admitted, and even in our days, the Parsis, their successors, admit two principles, the one called Oromaze, and the other Ahriman. Plutarch says: "The Persians believed that the first was of the nature of light, and the second of that of darkness. Among the Egyptians the first was called Osiris, and the second Typhon, eternal foe to the first."