s not
occur in the Gathas as a proper name. Far less is there any graduated
hierarchy of evil, surrounding a Prince of Darkness, with a sort of
court, antagonistic to the angelic host of Ormazd, as in the latter
portions of the Zendavesta and in the modern Parsee system.

Thus Dualism proper, or a belief in two uncreated and independent
principles, one a principle of good and the other a principal of evil,
was no part of the original Zoroastrianism. At the same time we find,
even in the Gathas, the earliest portions of the Zondavesta, the germ
out of which Dualism sprung. The contrast between good and evil is
strongly and sharply marked in the Gathas; the writers continually harp
upon it, their minds are evidently struck with this sad antithesis which
colors the whole moral world to them; they see everywhere a struggle
between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, purity and impurity;
apparently they are blind to the evidence of harmony and agreement
in the universe, discerning nothing anywhere but strife, conflict,
antagonism. Nor is this all. They go a step further, and personify the
two parties to the struggle. One is a "white" or holy "Spirit" (_cpento
mainyus_), and the other a "dark spirit" (_angro mainyus_). But this
personification is merely poetical or metaphorical, not real. The "white
spirit" is not Ahura-mazda, and the "dark spirit" is not a hostile
intelligence. Both resolve themselves on examination into mere figures
of speech--phantoms of poetic imagery--abstract notions, clothed by
language with an apparent, not a real, personality.

It was natural that, as time went on, Dualism should develop itself
out of the primitive Zoroastrianism. Language exercises a tyranny
over thought, and abstractions in the ancient world were ever becoming
persons. The Iranian mind, moreover, had been strack, when it first
turned to contemplate the world, with a certain antagonism; and, having
once entered this track, it would be compelled to go on, and seek to
discover the origin of the antagonism, the cause (or causes) to which
it was to be ascribed. Evil seemed most easily accounted for by the
supposition of an evil Person; and the continuance of an equal struggle,
without advantage to either side, which was what the Iranians thought
they beheld in the world that lay around them, appeared to them to
imply the equality of that evil Person with the Being whom they rightly
regarded as the author of all good. Thus Dualism had