nge.

378. I have already pointed out more than once in this work that evil is a
consequence of privation, and I think that I have explained that
intelligibly enough. St. Augustine has already put forward this idea, and
St. Basil said something of the same kind in his _Hexaemeron_, Homil. 2,
'that vice is not a living and animate substance, but an affection of the
soul contrary to virtue, which arises from one's abandoning the good; and
there is therefore no need to look for an original evil'. M. Bayle, quoting
this passage in his _Dictionary_ (art. 'Paulicians', lit. D, p. 2325)
commends a remark by Herr Pfanner (whom he calls a German theologian, but
he is a jurist by profession, Counsellor to the Dukes of Saxony), who
censures St. Basil for not being willing to admit that God is the author of
physical evil. Doubtless God is its author, when the moral evil is assumed
to be already in existence; but speaking generally, one might assert that
God permitted physical evil by implication, in permitting moral evil which
is its source. It appears that the Stoics knew also how slender is the
entity of evil. These words of Epictetus are an indication: 'Sicut
aberrandi causa meta non ponitur, sic nec natura mali in mundo existit.'

379. There was therefore no need to have recourse to a principle of evil,
as St. Basil aptly observes. Nor is it necessary either to seek the origin
of evil in matter. Those who believed that there was a chaos before God
laid his hand upon it sought therein the source of disorder. It was an
opinion which Plato introduced into his _Timaeus_. Aristotle found fault
with him for that (in his third book on Heaven, ch. 2) because, [353]
according to this doctrine, disorder would be original and natural, and
order would have been introduced against nature. This Anaxagoras avoided by
making matter remain at rest until it was stirred by God; and Aristotle in
the same passage commends him for it. According to Plutarch (_De Iside et
Osiride_, and _Tr. de Animae Procreatione ex Timaeo_) Plato recognized in
matter a certain maleficent soul or force, rebellious against God: it was
an actual blemish, an obstacle to God's plans. The Stoics also believed
that matter was the source of defects, as Justus Lipsius showed in the
first book of the Physiology of the Stoics.

380. Aristotle was right in rejecting chaos: but it is not always easy to
disentangle the conceptions of Plato, and such a task would be still les