which have reached us, the whole
subject lies in confusion. It is scarcely possible to unravel the
tangled mesh. Sometimes it seems to be taught that Ahriman was at
first good, an angel of light who, through envy of his great
compeer, sank from his primal purity, darkened into hatred, and
became the rancorous enemy of truth and love. At other times he
appears to be considered as the pure primordial essence of evil.
The various views may have prevailed in different ages or in
different schools. Upon the whole, however, we hold the opinion
that the real Zoroastrian idea of Ahriman was moral and free, not
physical and fatal. The whole basis of the universe was good; evil
was an after perversion, a foreign interpolation, a battling
mixture. First, the perfect Zeruana was once all in all: Ahriman,
as well as Ormuzd, proceeded from him; and the inference that he
was pure would seem to belong to the idea of his origin. Secondly,
so far as the account of Satan given in the book of Job perhaps
the earliest appearance of the Persian notion in Jewish
literature warrants any inference or supposition at all, it would
lead to the image of one who was originally a prince in heaven,
and who must have fallen thence to become the builder and
potentate of hell. Thirdly, that matter is not an essential core
of evil, the utter antagonist of spirit, and that Ahriman is not
evil by an intrinsic necessity, will appear from the two
conceptions lying at the base and crown of the Persian system:
that the creation, as it first came from the hands of Ormuzd, was
perfectly good; and that finally the purified material world shall
exist again unstained by a breath of evil, Ahriman himself
becoming like Ormuzd. He is not, then, aboriginal and
indestructible evil in substance. The conflict between Ormuzd and
him is the temporary ethical struggle of light and darkness, not
the internecine ontological war of spirit and matter. Roth says,
"Ahriman was originally good: his fall was a determination of his
will, not an inherent necessity of his nature." 8 Whatever other
conceptions may be found, whatever inconsistencies or
contradictions to this may appear, still, we believe the genuine
Zoroastrian view was such as we have now stated. The opposite
doctrine arose from the more abstruse lucubrations of a more
modern time, and is Manichaan, not Zoroastrian.

8 Zoroastrische Glaubenslehre, ss. 397, 398.

Ormuzd created a resplendent and happy world. Ahrima