The Intellectual-Principle we are discussing is not of such a kind : It possesses all : It is all : It is present to all by Its self-presence : It has all by other means than having, for what It possesses is still Itself, nor does any particular of aU within It stand apart ; for every such particular is the whole and in all respects all, while yet not confused in the mass but still distinct, apart to the extent that any participant in the Intel- lectual-Principle participates not in the entire as one thing but in what- soever lies within its own reach.
And the First Act is the Act of The Good stationary within Itself, and the First Existence is the self-contained Existence of The Good ; but there is also an Act upon It, that of the Intellectual-Principle which, as it were, lives about It.
And the Soul, outside, circles around the Intellectual-Principle, and by gazing upon it, seeing into the depths of It, through It sees God.
Such is the untroubled, the blissful, life of divine beings, and Evil has no place in it ; if this were all, there would be no Evil but Good only, the first, the second and the third Good. All, thus far, is with the King
of All, unfailing Cause of Good and Beauty and controller of all ; and what is Good in the second degree depends upon the Second-Principle and tertiary Good upon the Third.
If such be the Nature of Beings and of That which transcends all the realm of Being, Evil cannot have place among Beings or in the Beyond-Being ; these are good.
There remains, only, if Evil exist at all, that it be situate in the realm of Non-Being, that it be some mode, as it were, of the Non-Being, that it have its seat in something in touch with Non-Being or to a certain degree communicate in Non-Being.
By this Non-Being, of course, we are not to understand something that simply does not exist, but only something of an utterly different order from Authentic-Being : there is no question here of movement or position with regard to Being ; the Non-Being we are thinking of is, rather, an image of Being or perhaps something still further removed than even an image.
Now this (the required faint image of Being) might be the sensible universe with all the impressions it engenders, or it might be something of even later derivation, accidental to the realm of sense, or again, it might be the source of the sense-world or something of the same order entering into it to complete it.
Some conception of it would be reached by thinking of measure- lessness as opposed to measure, of the unbounded against bound, the unshaped against a principle of shape, the ever-needy against the self- sufficing : think of the ever-undefined, the never at rest, the all-accepting but never sated, utter dearth ; and make all this character not mere accident in it but its equivalent for essential-being, so that, whatsoever fragment of it be taken, that part is all lawless void, while whatever participates in it and resembles it becomes evil, though not of course to the point of being, as itself is. Evil- Absolute.
In what substantial-form (hypostasis) then is all this to be found — not as accident but as the very substance itself ?
For if Evil can enter into other things, it must have in a certain sense a prior existence, even though it may not be an essence. As there is Good, the Absolute, as well as Good, the quality, so, together with the derived evil entering into something not itself, there must be the Absolute Evil.
But how ? Can there be Unmeasure apart from an unmeasured object ?
Does not Measure exist apart from unmeasured things ? Precisely as there is Measure apart from anything measured, so there is Unmeasure apart from the unmeasured. If Unmeasure could not exist independently, it must exist either in an unmeasured object or in something measured ; but the unmeasured could not need Unmeasure and the measured could not contain it.
There must, then, be some Undetermination-Absolute, some Abso- lute Formlessness ; all the qualities cited as characterising the Nature of Evil must be summed under an Absolute Evil ; and every evil thing outside of this must either contain this Absolute by saturation or have taken the character of evil and become a cause of evil by consecration to this Absolute.
What will this be ?
That Kind whose place is below aU the patterns, forms, shapes, measurements and limits, that which has no trace of good by any title of its own, but (at best) takes order and grace from some Principle out- side itself, a mere image as regards Absolute-Being but the Authentic Essence of Evil — in so far as Evil can have Authentic Being. In such a Kind Reason recognises the Primal Evil, Evil Absolute.
The bodily Kind, in that it partakes of Matter is an evil thing. What form is in bodies is an untrue form : they are without life : by their own natural disorderly movement they make away with each other ; they are hindrances to the soul in its proper Act ; in their cease- less flux they are always slipping away from Being.
Soul, on the contrary, since not every Soul is evil, is not an evil Kind.
What, then, is the evil Soul ?
It is, we read, the Soul that has entered into the service of that in which soul-evil is implanted by nature, in whose service the unreasoning phase of the Soul accepts evil — unmeasure, excess and shortcoming, which bring forth licentiousness, cowardice and all other flaws of the Soul, all the states, foreign to the true nature, which set up false judgements, so that the Soul comes to name things good or evil not by their true value but by the mere test of like and dislike.
But what is the root of this evil state ? how can it be brought under the causing principle indicated ?
Firstly, such a Soul is not apart from Matter, is not purely itself. That is to say, it is touched with Unmeasure, it is shut out from the Forming-Idea that orders and brings to measure, and this because it is merged into a body made of Matter.
Then if the Reasoning-Faculty too has taken hurt, the Soul’s seeing is baulked by the passions and by the darkening that Matter brings to it, by its decline into Matter, by its very attention no longer to Essence but to Process — whose principle or source is, again. Matter, the Kind so evil as to saturate with its own pravity even that which is not in it but merely looks towards it.
For, whoUy without part in Good, the negation of Good, unmingled Lack, this Matter-Kind makes over to its own likeness whatsoever comes in touch with it.
The Soul wrought to perfection, addressed towards the Intellectual- Principle is steadfastly pure : it has turned away from Matter ; all that is undetermined, that is outside of measure, that is evil, it neither sees nor draws near ; it endures in its purity, only, and wholly, determined by the Intellectual-Principle.
The Soul that breaks away from this source of its reality to the non-perfect and non-primal is, as it were, a secondary, an image, to the loyal Soul. By its falling-away — and to the extent of the fall — it is stripped of Determination, becomes wholly indeterminate, sees darkness. Looking to what repels vision, as we look when we are said to see dark- ness, it has taken Matter into itself.
But, it will be objected, if this seeing and frequenting of the darkness is due to the lack of good, the Soul’s evil has its source in that very lack ; the darkness will be merely a secondary cause — and at once the Principle of Evil is removed from Matter, is made anterior to Matter.
No : Evil is not in any and every lack ; it is in absolute lack. What falls in some degree short of the Good is not Evil ; considered in its own kind it might even be perfect, but where there is utter dearth, there we have Essential Evil, void of all share in Good ; this is the case with Matter.
Matter has not even existence whereby to have some part in Good : Being is attributed to it by an accident of words : the truth would be that it has Non-Being.
Mere lack brings merely Not-Goodness : Evil demands the absolute lack — though, of course, any very considerable shortcoming makes the ultimate fall possible and is already, in itself, an evil.
In fine we are not to think of Evil as some particular bad thing— injustice, for example, or any other ugly trait — but as a principle distinct from any of the particular forms in which, by the addition of certain elements, it becomes manifest. Thus there may be wickedness in the Soul ; the forms this general wickedness is to take will be determined by the environing Matter, by the faculties of the Soul that operate and by the nature of their operation, whether seeing, acting, or merely admitting impression.
But supposing things external to the Soul are to be counted Evil — sickness, poverty and so forth — how can they be referred to the principle we have described ?
Well, sickness is excess or defect in the body, which as a material organism rebels against order and measure ; ughness is but matter not mastered by Ideal-Form ; poverty consists in our need and lack of goods made necessary to us by our association with Matter whose very nature is to be one long want.
If all this be true, we cannot be, ourselves, the source of Evil, we are not evil in ourselves ; Evil was before we came to be ; the Evil which
holds men down binds them against their will ; and for those that have the strength — not found in all men, it is true — there is a deliverance from the evils that have found lodgement in the soul.
In a word since Matter belongs only to the sensible world, vice ii' men is not the Absolute Evil ; not all men are vicious ; some overcome vice, some, the better sort, are never attacked by it ; and those who master it win by means of that in them which is not material.
If this be so, how do we explain the teaching that evils can never pass away but “ exist of necessity,” that “ while evil has no place in the divine order, it haunts mortal nature and this place for ever” ?
Does this mean that heaven is clear of evil, ever moving its orderly way, spinning on the appointed path, no injustice There or any flaw, no wrong done by any power to any other but all true to the settled plan, while injustice and disorder prevail on earth, designated as “ the Mortal Kind and this Place ” ?
Not quite so ; for the precept to “ flee hence ” does not refer to earth and earthly life. The flight we read of consists not in quitting earth but in living our earth-life “ with justice and piety in the light of philo- sophy ” ; it is vice we are to flee, so that clearly to the writer Evil is simply vice with the sequels of vice. And when the disputant in that dialogue says that, if men could be convinced of the doctrine advanced, there would be an end of Evil, he is answered, ” That can never be : Evil is of necessity, for there must be a contrary to good.”
Still we may reasonably ask how can vice in man be a contrary to The Good in the Supernal : for vice is the contrary to virtue and virtue is not The Good but merely the good thing by which Matter is brought to order.
How can there be any contrary to the Absolute Good, when the absolute has no quality ?
Besides, is there any universal necessity that the existence of one of two contraries should entail the existence of the other ? Admit that the existence of one is often accompanied by the existence of the other
— sickness and health, for example — yet there is no universal com- pulsion.
Perhaps, however, our author did not mean that this was universally true ; he is speaking only of The Good.
But then, if The Good is an essence, and still more, if It is that which transcends all existence, how can It have any contrary ?
That there is nothing contrary to essence is certain in the case of particular existences — established by practical proof — but not in the quite different case of the Universal.