DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43363#0280
6z PLUTARCH’S Treatife of
vidence that first reduced the formless mass of matter
into order, and that ssill disposes and governs every
thing: seeing ’tis impossible that any one cause what-
ever, be it bad, or even good (for God cannot be the
author of any evil) ihould be the common principle os
all things. For the harmony of the world, like that os
a harp, sto use the expression of Heraclitus') is made
up of discords, and consists in a mixture of good and
evil, or, as Euripides has it, “ good and evil cannot be
tc seperated from each other, though they are so tempered
as that beauty and order be the result”.—From hence
therefore arose that very ancient opinion, which has
been handed down from Theologists and Legiilators
to the Poets and Philosophers; an opinion, which,
though it’s first author be unknown, has nevertheless
gained so firm and establiihed a credit every where, as
not only to be commonly talked of by both Greeks and
Barbarians* but to be even taught by them in their
myileries, and in their sacrifices; namely, that the world
is neither wholly left to it’s own motions without some
mind, some superiour reason to guide and govern it,
nor that it is one such mind only or reason, that, as it
were with a helm or bridle, Heers and directs the
whole -— but as there are many things wherein the
good and evil are equally blended together, or ra-
ther indeed as Nature produces nothing here below
without such mixture, and as it cannot be supposed
that one and the lame being is the dispenser of these
contrarieties, distributing as it were from two different
vessels the several dissindi portions of good and evil,
like a poor Retailer mingling them and dalhing them
to-
vidence that first reduced the formless mass of matter
into order, and that ssill disposes and governs every
thing: seeing ’tis impossible that any one cause what-
ever, be it bad, or even good (for God cannot be the
author of any evil) ihould be the common principle os
all things. For the harmony of the world, like that os
a harp, sto use the expression of Heraclitus') is made
up of discords, and consists in a mixture of good and
evil, or, as Euripides has it, “ good and evil cannot be
tc seperated from each other, though they are so tempered
as that beauty and order be the result”.—From hence
therefore arose that very ancient opinion, which has
been handed down from Theologists and Legiilators
to the Poets and Philosophers; an opinion, which,
though it’s first author be unknown, has nevertheless
gained so firm and establiihed a credit every where, as
not only to be commonly talked of by both Greeks and
Barbarians* but to be even taught by them in their
myileries, and in their sacrifices; namely, that the world
is neither wholly left to it’s own motions without some
mind, some superiour reason to guide and govern it,
nor that it is one such mind only or reason, that, as it
were with a helm or bridle, Heers and directs the
whole -— but as there are many things wherein the
good and evil are equally blended together, or ra-
ther indeed as Nature produces nothing here below
without such mixture, and as it cannot be supposed
that one and the lame being is the dispenser of these
contrarieties, distributing as it were from two different
vessels the several dissindi portions of good and evil,
like a poor Retailer mingling them and dalhing them
to-