stence there long before the name of philosophy was
known in the western world.

Zoroaster's doctrine agreed in every respect with Plato's; for besides
Oomazes, the good, and Arimanius, the evil principle, he taught that
there was a third, or mediatory one, called Mithras. That it never
became any part of the popular belief in Greece or Italy is quite clear.
All the polytheism of those countries recognized each of the gods
as authors alike of good and evil. Nor did even the chief of the
divinities, under whose power the rest were placed, offer any exception
to the general rule; for Jupiter not only gave good from one urn and ill
from another, but he was also, according to the barbarous mythology of
classical antiquity, himself a model at once of human perfections and of
human vices.

After the light of the Christian religion had made some way toward
supplanting the ancient polytheism, the doctrine of two principles was
broached; first by Marcion, who lived in the time of Adrian and Antonius
Pius, early in the second century; and next by Manes, a hundred years
later. He was a Persian slave, who was brought into Greece, where he
taught this doctrine, since known by his name, having learned it, as is
said, from Scythianus, an Arabian. The Manichean doctrines, afterwards
called also Paulician, from a great teacher of them in the seventh
century, were like almost all the heresies in the primitive church, soon
mixed up with gross impurities of sacred rites as well as extravagant
absurdities of creed.

The Manicheans were, probably as much on this account as from the spirit
of religious intolerance, early the objects of severe persecution; and
the Code of Justinian itself denounces capital punishment against any of
the sect, if found within the Roman dominions.

It must be confessed that the theory of two principles, when kept free
from the absurdities and impurities which were introduced into the
Manichean doctrine, is not unnaturally adopted by men who have no
aid from the light of revelation,[1] and who are confounded by the
appearance of a world where evil and good are mixed together, or seem to
struggle with one another, sometimes the one prevailing, and sometimes
the other; and accordingly, in all countries, in the most barbarous
nations, as well as among the most refined, we find plain traces of
reflecting men having been driven to this solution of the difficulty.

It seems upon a superficial view to be very easily