Bayle regarded the subject of evil as one of the great arsenals from whence his weapons were to be chiefly drawn. None of the articles in his famous Dictionary are more labored than those in which he treats of this subject. _Monichian_, and still more _Paulician_, almost assume the appearance of formal treatises upon the question; and both _Marchionite_ and _Zoroaster_ treat of the same subject. All these articles are of considerable value; they contain the greater part of the learning upon the question; and they are distinguished by the acuteness of reasoning which was the other characteristic of their celebrated author. Those ancient philosophers who did not agree with Epicurus in arguing from the existence of evil against the existence of a providence that superintended and influenced the destinies of the world, were put to no little difficulty in accounting for the fact which they did not deny, and yet maintaining the power of a divine ruler. The doctrine of a double principle, or of two divine beings of opposite natures, one beneficent, the other mischievous, was the solution which one class of reasoners deemed satisfactory, and to which they held themselves driven by the phenomena of the universe. Others unable to deny, the existence of things which men denominate evil, both physical and moral, explain them in a different way. They maintained that physical evil only obtains the name from our imperfect and vicious or feeble dispositions; that to a wise man there is no such thing; that we may rise superior to all such groveling notions as make us dread or repine at any events which can befall the body; that pain, sickness, loss of fortune or of reputation, exile, death itself, are only accounted ills by a weak and pampered mind; that if we find the world tiresome, or woeful, or displeasing, we may at any moment quit it; and that therefore we have no right whatever to call any suffering connected with existence on earth an evil, because almost all sufferings can be borne by a patient and firm mind; since if the situation we are placed in becomes either intolerable, or upon the whole more painful than agreeable, it is our own fault that we remain in it. But these philosophers took a further view of the question which especially applied to moral evil. They considered that nothing could be more groundless than to suppose that if there were no evil there could be any good in the world; and they illustrated this position by asking how we could know anything of temperance, fortitude or justice, unless there were such things as excess, cowardice and injustice.