II. The conception of the relation between bad and good, as reality opposed to reality, is mythological and religious (Parseeism, Manichæism, Jewish-Christian doctrine of the devil, etc.). But evil had already begun to reveal itself to the philosophical reflection of the ancients as the unreal, the not being; and this is explicitly affirmed in Neoplatonism. It was not, however, possible to understand this function of unreality, real in its way, without a general dialectical conception, which became very slowly mature. Without a dialectic conception, evil, conceived as unreality, becomes mere illusion, not so much a moment of the real as an equivocation of man philosophizing. This is clearly to be seen in Spinoza, who opposes the full laws of reality to the narrow laws of human nature, saying: _Quidquid nobis in natura ridiculum, absurdum aut malum videtur, id inde venit quod res tantum ex parte novimus, totiusque naturae ordinem et cohaerentium maxima ex parte ignoramus, et quod omnia ex usu nostrae rationis dirigi volumus, cum tamen id, quod malum esse dictat, non malum sit respectu ordinis et legum universae naturae; sed tantum solius nostrae naturae legum respectu._ For indeed, if evil, error and wickedness were something that had essence, God, who is the cause of all that has essence (continues Spinoza), would also be the cause of evil, of error, and of wickedness. But this is not so, because evil is nothing real. _Neronis matricidium_ (he observes) _quatenus aliquid positivum comprehendebat, scelus non erat: nam facinus externum fecit, simulque intentionem ad trucidendam matrem Orestes habuit, et tamen, saltem ita uti Nero, non accusatur. Quodnam ergo Neronis scelus? Non aliud quam quod hoc facinore ostendit se ingratum, immisericordem ac inobedientem esse. Certum autem est, nihil horum aliquid essentiae exprimere, et idcirco Deum eorum non fuisse catisam, licet causa actus et intentionis Neronis fuerit_[5] But Spinoza was not able to determine in what sense Nero was really ungrateful, implacable, and disobedient, nor in what way such a judgment could be justified, owing to his idea of Substance, not as subject, spirit, activity, but as cause. Kant did not succeed in understanding the nature of evil; for him good and evil were "the categories of freedom,"[6] and the view of Fichte who makes the radical evil to be _vis inertiae,_ laziness (_Trägheit,_) which is in nature and in man as nature,[7] represents progress in respect to the Kantian position. But only with the Hegelian dialectical view of evil, understood as negation, is evil at the same time given its right place; and its unreality, contradiction, which is no longer the product of illusion of thought, but of things themselves, in intimate contradiction with one another, if it be a blemish, is shown to be the blemish, not of human thought, but of reality.[8] [Sidenote: _Decision and freedom._]