“’Tis rather to be wondered at, that in so barbarous an age, they should throw off so many errors rather than that they should retain some.”[11] It now seems certain that the movement based itself on a philosophy fundamentally hostile to Christianity and nauseous to us who have breathed no other air than that of Christendom. Before considering the nature of this philosophy, and of its logical developments in the sphere of morals, let us reject the various names by which it has been called by modern scholars, and refer to it as the “Albigensian” movement. It is true that “Manichean,” “neo-Manichean,” and “Catharist” (after the habit of the sect of referring to themselves as the “Cathari” or “pure”), are more descriptive. “Albigensian” is sanctioned by usage, and usage should prevail over the preciosity of the pedant. The un-Christian creed of the “Albigenses” began to sift into Western Europe soon after the year 1000. It was very old, for it represented one of the few fundamentally different ways of looking at life, and it is probably indestructible as long as the world endures. Its central idea is that the universe is dual and was created by two Gods, or if you will, two principles, of about equal strength, one Good and one Evil. The attempt to reconcile this idea with Christianity is as old as Manes who lived in Mesopotamia in the third century and founded the heretical sect of the Manicheans. Back of Manes, again, at the very beginning of recorded history, we find the Persians with a dualist religion which they attributed to a shadowy prophet Zoroaster, or Zarathustra. To-day three striking examples of its survival come to mind. First, Dualism, with its scorn for matter as inherently evil, is not far from Mrs. Eddy’s Christian Science. Second, in 1909, Paul Elmer More, one of the foremost of American scholars and critics, who would rank among the great critics of all times did he but possess the gift of vivid phrase, published a book, “Studies in Dualism,” which bore on its title page the following quotation from another modern worthy, Sir Leslie Stephen:— “Manicheanism may be disavowed in words. It cannot be exiled from the actual belief of mankind.”[12] Third, in 1917, under the influence of the war, H. G. Wells (whom I hesitate whether to characterize as a sort of prose Shelley, “beating in the void his luminous wings in vain,” or as an æolian harp upon which almost any passing wind of doctrine can play) thus sets forth the thoughts of his imaginary Englishman mourning for the death of his soldier son:— “His mind drifted back once more to those ancient heresies of the Gnostics and the Manicheans which saw the God of the World as altogether evil. For a while his soul sank down into the uncongenial darknesses of these creeds of despair.... “Is the whole scheme of Nature evil? Is life in its essence cruel?”[13]