SECT. IX. Against two principles.

AND here, by the way, we ought to reject their opinion, who imagine there are two active principles, the one good, and the other evil.¹⁶¹⁶   This has respect to the ancient disciples of Zoroastres, and to the Manichees. Le Clerc. For from two principles, that nye contradictory to each other, can arise no regular order, but only ruin and destruction: neither can there be a self-existent being perfectly evil, as there is one self-existent perfectly good; because evil is a defect, which cannot reside but in something which has a being; and the very having a being is to be reckoned amongst the things which are good.¹⁷¹⁷   But here the author was speaking of moral and not of natural good. It had therefore been better to have forborne such kind of reasoning. Le Clerc.