The Divine Names

Chapter 4. Concerning 'good,' 'light,' 'beautiful,' 'desire,' 'ecstasy,' 'jealousy.' Also That Evil Is Neither Existent nor Sprung From Anything Existent nor Inherent in Existent Things. · Part 6 of 11

^17. Words of the same, from the same Hymns of Yearning “Let us once more collect these powers into one and declare that there is but One Simple Power Which of Itself moveth all things to be mingled in an unity, starting from the Good and going unto the lowest of the creatures and thence again returning through all stages in due order unto the Good, and thus revolving from Itself, and through Itself and upon Itself^[322] and towards Itself, in an unceasing orbit.”

18. Now some one, perhaps, will say: “If the Beautiful and Good is an Object of Yearning and desire and love to all (for even that which is not longs for It, as was said,^[323] and strives to find its rest therein, and thus It creates a form even in formless things and thus is said super-essentially to contain, and does so contain, the non-existent)^[324]—if this is so, how is it that the company of the devils desires not the Beautiful and Good, but, being inclined towards matter and fallen far from the fixed angelic state of desire for the Good, becomes a cause of all evils to itself and to all other beings which we describe as becoming evil? How is it that the devils, having been produced wholly out of the Good, are not good in disposition? Or how is it that, if produced good from out of the Good, they became changed?^[325] What made them evil, and indeed what is the nature of evil? From what origin did it arise and in what thing doth it lie? Why did He that is Good will to produce it? And how, having so willed, was He able so to do?^[326] And if evil comes from some other cause, what other cause can anything have excepting the Good? How, if there is a Providence, doth evil exist, or arise at all, or escape destruction? And why doth anything in the world desire it instead of Good?”

19. Thus perhaps will such bewildered discourse speak. Now we will bid the questioner look towards the truth of things, and in the first place we will venture thus to answer: “Evil cometh not of the Good; and if it cometh therefrom it is not evil. For even as fire cannot cool us, so Good cannot produce the things which are not good. And if all things that have being come from the Good (for it is natural to the Good to produce and preserve the creatures, and natural to evil to corrupt and to destroy them) then nothing in the world cometh of evil. Then evil can- not even in any wise exist, if it act as evil upon itself. And unless it do so act, evil is not wholly evil, but hath some portion of the Good whereby it can exist at all. And if the things that have being desire the Beautiful and Good and accomplish all their acts for the sake of that which seemeth good, and if all that they intend hath the Good as its Motive and its Aim (for nothing looks unto the nature of evil to guide it in its actions), what place is left for evil among things that have being, or how can it have any being at all bereft of such good purpose? And if all things that have being come of the Good and the Good is Beyond things that have being, then, whereas that which exists not yet hath being in the Good; evil contrariwise hath none (otherwise it were not wholly evil or Non-Ens; for that which is wholly Non-Ens can be but naught except this be spoken Super-Essentially of the Good). So the Good must have Its seat far above and before that which hath mere being and that which hath not; but evil hath no place either amongst things that have being or things that have not, yea it is farther removed than the Non-Existent from the Good and hath less being than it. ‘Then’ (saith one perchance) ‘whence cometh evil? For if’ (saith he) ‘evil is not, virtue and vice must needs be the same both in their whole entirety and in their corresponding particulars,’–i. e. even that which fighteth against virtue cannot be evil. And yet temperance is the opposite of debauchery, and righteousness of wickedness. And I mean not only the righteous and the unrighteous man, or the temperate and intemperate man; I mean that, even before the external distinction appeared between the virtuous man and his opposite, the ultimate distinction between the virtues and the vices hath existed long beforehand in the soul itself, and the passions war against the reason, and hence we must assume something evil which is contrary to goodness. For goodness is not contrary to itself, but, being come from One Beginning and being the offspring of One Cause, it rejoices in fellowship, unity, and concord. Even the lesser Good is not contrary to the greater, for that which is less hot or cold is not contrary to that which is more so. Wherefore evil lieth in the things that have being and possesseth being and is opposed and contrary to goodness. And if evil is the destruction of things which have being, that depriveth it not of its own being. It itself still hath being and giveth being to its offspring. Yea, is not the destruction of one thing often the birth of another? And thus it will be found that evil maketh contribution unto the fullness of the world, and through its presence, saveth the universe from imperfection.”

Translator’s notes (C. E. Rolt)

[322] “That which is not” = formless matter. Plotinus (Enn. i. 8. 3) defines the Non-Existent as the world of sense-perception. It is, as it were, the stuff of which all things perceived by the senses are made. This stuff cannot exist without some kind of “form,” and therefore, if entirely bereft of all “form,” would simply disappear into nothingness. Thus, apart from that element of “form” which it derives from the Good, it is sheer Non-Entity.

Each individual thing consists of “matter” and “form”—i. e. of this indeterminate “stuff” and of the particular qualities belonging to that thing. Remove those qualities and the thing is destroyed: e.g. remove the colours, shape, etc., of a tree, and the tree becomes nonexistent. It crumbles into dust, and thus the “stuff” takes on a new form. If, as M. Le Bon maintains, material particles sometimes lose their material qualities and are changed into energy, in such a case the “stuff” takes on yet another kind of form. The individual thing, in every case, becomes non-existent when it loses its “form,” or the sum total of its individual qualities, but the “stuff” persists because it at once assumes another “form.”

Hence this “stuff,” being non-existent per se, draws its existence from the Good Which is the Source of all “form.” And thus the existence of this non-existent stuff is ultimately contained in the Good.

D. tries to prove that evil is non-existent by showing that there is nothing that can have produced it. Good cannot have produced it because a thing cannot produce its own opposite; evil cannot have produced itself because evil is always destructive and never productive. All things that exist are produced by the Good or the desire for the Good-which comes to the same thing.

[323] The “matter” or stuff of which the universe is made, exists ultimately in the Good, but evil does not. All force exists ultimately in the Good, but the warping of it, or the lawlessness of it (which is the evil of it), does not exist in the Good. Force, or energy, as such is a relative embodiment of the Absolute: evil as such is a contradiction of the Absolute.

[324] i. e. There is an element of good in evil things enabling them to cohere and so to exist. In this passage “Non-Existent” is used in three senses: (1) “Matter,” or force, cannot exist without some form (which is its complement) and therefore is technically called non-existent. (2) Evil cannot exist at all on the ultimate plane of Being, nor in this world without an admixture of good (which is its contrary) and therefore is in an absolute sense non-existent. (3) The Good is beyond all existence and therefore is by transcendence Non-Existent.

[325] The Good is beyond this world and beyond the stuff, or force, of which this world is made.

Evil, on the other hand, is below this world and the stuff composing it. Get rid of the limitations in this world (sc. the difference between one quality and another) and you have an energy or force possessing all the particular qualities of things fused in one. Get rid of the limitations inherent in this (i. e. intensify it to infinity) and you have the Good. On the other hand, destroy some particular object (e.g. a tree), and that object, being now actually non-existent, has still a potential existence in the world-stuff. Destroy that potential existence and you have absolute non-existence, which is Evil.

Thus the three grates may be tabulated as follows:

(i) Transcendent Non-Existence (= the Good).

(ii) Actual Non-Existence (=the world stuff, force or energy, of which material particles are a form. Modern science teaches that atoms have no actual existence. Thus the atomic theory has worked round to something very much like D’s theory of the non-existent world stuff).

(iii) Absolute Non-Existence (= Evil).

The three grades might be expressed by a numerical symbol as follows: If finite numbers represent the various forms of existence, the Infinity (which contradicts the laws of finite numbers) = the Good: Unity (which is a mere abstraction and cannot exist apart from multiplicity since every finite unit is divisible into parts) = the world stuff: Zero (which annihilates all finite numbers that are multiplied by it) = Evil.

[326] The argument in the rest of the section is as follows:

Evil exists, for there is a radical difference between virtue and vice. Evil is, in fact, not merely negative, but positive: not merely destructive, but also productive. And hence it is necessary to the perfection of the world. To which D. replies in the next section that evil does not exist qua evil, nor is it positive or productive qua evil. It exists and is positive and productive solely through an admixture of the Good. (We might illustrate this by the fact that Zero, multiplied by Infinity, produces finite number.)

Read in full at CCEL

Source: The Divine Names (CCEL)