have done so, they attain perfection and make way for
new dispensations and worlds.[767] In the exercise of their freedom,
however, disobedience, laxity, laziness, and failure make their
appearance among them in an endless multiplicity of ways.[768] The
disciplining and purifying of these spirits was the purpose for which
the material world was created by God.[769] It is therefore a place of
purification, ruled and harmoniously arranged by God's wisdom.[770] Each
member of the world of spirits has received a different kind of material
nature in proportion to his degree of removal from the Creator. The
highest spirits, who have virtually held fast by that which is good,
though they too stand in need of restitution, guide the world, are
servants of God ([Greek: angeloi]), and have bodies of an exceedingly
subtle kind in the form of a globe (stars). The spirits that have fallen
very deeply (the spirits of men) are banished into material bodies.
Those that have altogether turned against God have received very dark
bodies, indescribably ugly, though not visible. Men therefore are placed
between the angels and demons, both of whom try to influence them. The
moral struggle that man has to undergo within himself is made harder by
the demons, but lightened by the angels,[771] for these spiritual powers
are at all times and places acting both upon the physical and the
spiritual world. But everything is subject to the permission of the
divine goodness and finally also to the guidance of divine providence,
though the latter has created for itself a limit in freedom.[772] Evil,
however, and it is in this idea that Origen's great optimism consists,
cannot conquer in the end. As it is nothing eternal, so also it is at
bottom nothing real; it is "nonexistent" ([Greek: ouch on]) and "unreal"
([Greek: anupostaton]).[773] For this very reason the estrangement of
the spirits from God must finally cease; even the devil, who, as far as
his _being_ is concerned, resulted from God's will, cannot always remain
a devil. The spirits must return to God, and this moment is also the end
of the material world, which is merely an intermediate phase.[774]

According to this conception the doctrine of man, who in Origen's view
is no longer the sole aim of creation to the same extent as he is with
the other Fathers,[775] assumes the following form: The essence of man
is formed by the reasonable soul, which has fallen from the world above.
This is united w