But of what nature would this contrary be, the contrary to universal existence and in general to the Primals ?
To essential existence would be opposed the non-existence ; to the nature of Good, some principle and source of evil. Both these will be sources, the one of what is good, the other of what is evil ; and all within the domain of the one principle is opposed, as contrary, to the entire domain of the other, and this in a contrariety more violent than any existing between secondary things.
For these last are opposed as members of one species or of one genus, and, within that common ground, they participate in some common quality.
In the case of the Primals or Universals there is such complete separation that what is the exact negation of one group constitutes the very nature of the other ; we have diametric contrariety if by contrariety we mean the extreme of remoteness.
Now to the content of the divine order, the fixed quaUty, the measuredness and so forth — there is opposed the content of the evil principle, its unfixedness, measurelessness and so forth : total is opposed to total. The existence of the one genus is a falsity, primarily, essentially, a falseness : the other genus has Essence- Authentic : the opposition is of truth to lie ; essence is opposed to essence.
Thus we see that it is not universally true that an Essence can have no contrary.
In the case of fire and water we would admit contrariety if it were not for their common element, the Matter, about which are gathered the
warmth and dryness of one and the dampness and cold of the other : if there were only present what constitutes their distinct kinds, the common ground being absent, there would be, here also, essence contrary to essence.
In sum, things utterly sundered, having nothing in common, stand- ing at the remotest poles, are opposites in nature : the contrariety does not depend upon quality or upon the existence of a distinct genus of beings, but upon the utmost difference, clash in content, clash in effect.
But why does the existence of the Principle of Good necessarily comport the existence of a Principle of Evil ? Is it because the All necessarily comports the existence of Matter ? Yes : for necessarily this All is made up of contraries : it could not exist if Matter did not. The Nature of this Kosmos is, therefore, a blend ; it is blended from the Intellectual-Principle and Necessity : what comes into it from God is good ; evil is from the Ancient Kind which, we read, is the underlying Matter not yet brought to order by the Ideal-Form.
But, since the expression “ this place " must be taken to mean the All, how explain the words “ mortal nature ” ?
The answer is in the passage (in which the Father of Gods addresses the Divinities of the lower sphere), “ Since you possess only a derivative being, you are not immortals . . . but by my power you shall escape dissolution.”
The escape, we read, is not a matter of place, but of acquiring virtue, of disengaging the self from the body ; this is the escape from Matter. Plato explains somewhere how a man frees himself and how he remains bound ; and the phrase “ to Hve among the gods ” means to live among the Intelligible-Existents, for these are the Immortals.
There is another consideration establishing the necessary existence of Evil.
Given that The Good is not the only existent thing, it is inevitable that, by the outgoing from it or, if the phrase be preferred, the con-
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tinuous down-going or away-going from it, there should be produced a Last, something after which nothing more can be produced : this will be Evil.
As necessarily as there is Something after the First, so necessarily there is a Last : this Last is Matter, the thing which has no residue of good in it : here is the necessity of Evil.
But there will still be some to deny that it is through this Matter that we ourselves become evil.
They will say that neither ignorance nor wicked desires arise in Matter. Even if they admit that the unhappy condition within us is due to the pravity inherent in body, they will urge that still the blame lies not in the Matter itself but with the Form present in it — such Form as heat, cold, bitterness, saltness and all other conditions perceptible to sense, or again such states as being full or void — not in the concrete signification but in the presence or absence of just such forms. In a word, they will argue, all particularity in desires and even in perverted judgements upon things, can be referred to such causes, so that Evil lies in this Form much more than in the mere Matter.
Yet, even with all this, they can be compelled to admit that Matter is the Evil.
For, the quality (form) that has entered into Matter does not act as an entity apart from the Matter, any more than axe-shape will cut apart from iron. Further, Forms lodged in Matter are not the same as they would be if they remained within themselves ; they are Reason- Principles Materialised, they are corrupted in the Matter, they have absorbed its nature : essential fire does not burn, nor do any of the essential entities effect, of themselves alone, the operation which, once they have entered into Matter, is traced to their action.
Matter becomes mistress of what is manifested through it : it corrupts and destroys the incomer, it substitutes its own opposite character and kind, not in the sense of opposing, for example, concrete cold to concrete warmth, but by setting its own formlessness against the
Form of heat, shapelessness to shape, excess and defect to the duly ordered. Thus, in sum, what enters into Matter ceases to belong to itself, comes to belong to Matter, just as, in the nourishment of living beings, what is taken in does not remain as it came, but is turned into, say, dog’s blood and all that goes to make a dog, becomes, in fact, any of the humours of any recipient.
No, if body is the cause of Evil, then there is no escape ; the cause of Evil is Matter.
Still, it will be urged, the incoming Idea should have been able to conquer the Matter.
The difficulty is that Matter’s master cannot rem.ain pure itself except by avoidance of Matter.
Besides, the constitution determines both the desires and their violence so that there are bodies in which the incoming idea cannot hold sway : there is a vicious constitution which chills and clogs the activity and inhibits choice ; a contrary bodily habit produces frivolity, lack of balance. The same fact is indicated by our successive variations of mood : in times of stress, we are not the same — either in desires or in ideas — as when we are at peace, and we differ again with every several object that brings us satisfaction.
To resume : the Measureless is evil primarily ; whatever, either by resemblance or participation, exists in the state of unmeasure, is evil secondarily, by force of its dealing with the Primal — primarily, the darkness ; secondarily, the darkened. Now, Vice, being an ignorance and a lack of measure in the Soul, is secondarily evil, not the Essential Evil, just as Virtue is not the Primal Good but is Likeness to The Good, or participation in it.
But what approach have we to the knowing of Good and Evil ?
And first of the Evil of soul : Virtue, we may know by the Intel- lectual-Principle and by means of the philosophic habit ; but Vice ?
As a ruler marks off straight from crooked, so Vice is known by its divergence from the line of Virtue.
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But are we able to affirm Vice by any vision we can have of it, or is there some other way of knowing it ?
Utter viciousness, certainly not by any vision, for it is utterly outside of bound and measure ; this thing which is nowhere can be seized only by abstraction ; but any degree of evil falling short of The Absolute is knowable by the extent of that falling short.
We see partial wrong ; from what is before us we divine that which is lacking to the entire form (or Kind) thus indicated ; we see that the completed Kind would be the Indeterminate ; by this process we are able to identify and affirm Evil. In the same way when we observe what we feel to be an ugly appearance in Matter — left there because the Reason- Principle has not become so completely the master as to cover over the unseemliness' — we recognise Ugliness by the falling-short from Ideal- Form.
But how can we identify what has never had any touch of Form ?
We utterly eliminate every kind of Form ; and the object in which there is none whatever we call Matter : if we are to see Matter we must so completely abolish Form that we take shapelessness into our very selves.
In fact it is another Intellectual-Principle, not the true, this which ventures a vision so uncongenial.
To see darkness the eye withdraws from the light ; it is striving to cease from seeing, therefore it abandons the light which would make the darkness invisible ; away from the light its power is rather that of not-seeing than of seeing and this not-seeing is its nearest approach to seeing Darkness. So the Intellectual-Principle, in order to see its contrary (Matter), must leave its own light locked up within itself, and as it were go forth from itself into an outside realm, it must ignore its native brightness, and submit itself to the very contradiction of its being.
But if Matter is devoid of quality how can it be evil ?
It is described as being devoid of quality in the sense only that it does not essentially possess any of the qualities which it admits and
which enter into it as into a substratum. No one says that it has no nature ; and if it has any nature at all, why may not that nature be evil though not in the sense of quality ?
Quality quahfies something not itself : it is therefore an accidental ; it resides in some other object. Matter does not exist in some other object but is the substratum in which the accidental resides. Matter, then, is said to be devoid of Quality in that it does not in itself possess this thing which is by nature an accidental. If, moreover. Quality itself be devoid of Quality, how can Matter, which is the unqualified, be said to have it ?
Thus, it is quite correct to say at once that Matter is without Quality and that it is evil : it is Evil not in the sense of having Quality but, precisely, in not having it ; give it Quality and in its very Evil it would almost be a Form, whereas in Truth it is a Kind contrary to Form.
“ But,” it may be said, “ the Kind opposed to all Form is Privation or Negation, and this necessarily refers to something other than itself, it is no Substantial-Existence : therefore if Evil is Privation or Negation it must be lodged in some Negation of Form : there will be no Self-Existent Evil.”
This objection may be answered by applying the principle to the case of Evil in the Soul ; the Evil, the Vice, will be a Negation and not anything having a separate existence ; we come to the doctrine which denies Matter or, admitting it, denies its Evil ; we need not seek else- where ; we may at once place Evil in the Soul, recognising it as the mere absence of Good. But if the negation is the negation of something that ought to become present, if it is a denial of the Good by the Soul, then the Soul produces vice within itself by the operation of its own Nature, and is devoid of good and, therefore. Soul though it be, devoid of life : the Soul, if it has no life, is soulless ; the Soul is no Soul.
No ; the Soul has life by its own nature and therefore does not, of its own nature, contain this negation of The Good : it has much good in it ; it carries a happy trace of the Intellectual-Principle and is not essentially evil : neither is it primally evil nor is that Primal Evil present in it even as an accidental, for the Soul is not wholly apart from the Good.