University of Virginia Library

DUALISM IN PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION

A dualist is one who believes that the facts which
he considers—whether they be the facts of the world
in general or a particular class of them—cannot be
explained except by supposing ultimately the existence
of two different and irreducible principles. For exam-
ple, dualists in anthropology explain facts about man
by two fundamental causes: reason and the passions,
soul and body, or freedom and determinism; in the
theory of knowledge, dualists explain knowledge by
the meeting of two different realities: subject and ob-
ject; in religious cosmology, they picture the world as
dominated by the perpetual conflict of a good and an
evil power, both of which have always existed.

There are various kinds of dualism, depending on
the different subjects of reflection or research. How-
ever, the subjects in which the term dualism is most often
employed are the history of religions and philoso-
phy. Thomas Hyde seems to have invented the term
“dualist,” which he uses in his history of the religion
of the ancient Persians (Historia religionis veterum
Persarum, 1700) in order to designate the men who
think that God and the devil are two coeternal princi-
ples. The term was later used in this same sense by
Pierre Bayle and by Leibniz. Christian Wolff first ap-
plied it to the philosophers who considered the body
and the soul as two distinct substances: “The dualists
(dualistae) are those who admit the existence of both
material and immaterial substances, that is, they con-
cede the real existence of bodies outside the ideas of
the souls and defend the immateriality of these souls”
(Psychologia rationalis [1734], Sec. 39). Most philoso-
phers employ the word in Wolff's sense, whereas most
historians of religions have retained the meaning of
“dualism” which it had in Hyde.

The word “dualism” then has two principal mean-
ings: (1) religious and (2) philosophical. In sense (1)
it designates religions such as Zoroastrianism of the
later Avesta and of the Pahlavi books; in sense (2)
dualism applies to philosophies such as Cartesianism.
It must be noted that these are very different doctrines,
from which it would be possible to draw even contra-
dictory consequences. For example, the dualism of soul
and body or of mind and matter might lead to the
denial of the existence of an absolutely evil mind (the
devil) and even of an evil principle. Matter is not in
itself evil for the dualistic philosophers; and a pure
mind can hardly be evil for those who think that the
cause of error, and consequently of evil, is the mixture
of mind with matter or the inversion of their legitimate
hierarchic order.

Since the two doctrines are distinct, we must con
sider them separately. However, it may seem that they
are united in some systems, for instance in Manicheism,
in which God's adversary is often personified but is
also identified with matter. But in Manicheism there
is something else, in addition to these two forms of
dualism. Manicheism proceeds from Gnosticism, and
Gnostic dualism—although some scholars held it to be
a synthesis of Hellenic (that is to say of philosophical)
and of Zoroastrian dualism—is neither exactly a philo-
sophical dualism, nor a religious one belonging to the
Zoroastrian type, nor a synthesis of both. It is in fact
a third genus, which consists essentially in the opposi-
tion of God and the world. We shall therefore handle
it in a third section. This peculiar form of dualism may
be considered as belonging principally to the history
of Christian theology.

I. DUALISM IN THE HISTORY
OF RELIGIONS

Primitive Religions. A religion is not dualistic simply
because it admits the existence of good and evil spirits.
In animism both good and evil spirits are still con-
sidered to belong to the same genus. They all belong
to the forces of nature that can be both good and bad:
good in certain respects and bad in other respects, good
in certain circumstances and bad in other circum-
stances. These powers are concerned with what serves
or injures them rather than with good for the sake of
good or evil for the sake of evil.

Certain so-called primitive religions recognize a
supreme spirit, a great God, and certain among them
represent this God as the principal but not the only
creator of the world. According to stories that are
found among the North American Indians and in cen-
tral and north Asia, a second being intervened in the
creation and caused the institution of death. The world
had been created all good, without evil or death, but
this second being (who is either an adversary or a
clumsy collaborator of the supreme God) did something
malicious or stupid which led to irreparable harm.
These stories seem to express the astonishment of man
in the presence of evil and death, and the tendency
to believe that these do not belong to the essence of
things but are rather the result of an accident which
cannot be due to the supreme deity. A germ of dualism
resides in that idea. But nowhere is the independent
origin of the second being positively expressed; some-
times he is a creature of the good god, sometimes
nothing is said of his origin.

Religions in Antiquity. In ancient Egypt a dualistic
tendency appears, on the one hand, in the religion of
the sun-god Rē, the principle of life and truth, who
has a perpetual adversary, Apophis, the gigantic ser-
pent of darkness; on the other hand, a similar tendency

appears in the legend of Osiris, in which Set is the
adversary who kills Osiris and constantly opposes Isis
and Horus. However, Rē (or another good god) might
be represented as the universal creator. As for Set, who
had been the principal god in certain provinces, he
was for a long time regarded as capable of doing good
in certain respects; only in a later epoch did he become
the personification of evil. Moreover, he was regarded
as the brother of Osiris, which means they had a com-
mon origin.

In the Vedic hymns we find two groups of divinities
who, though both were equally venerated, are some-
times conceived as opposed to one another: the deva
and the asura. In the Brāhmana, the deva remain as
gods, but the asura became demons. However, these
Indian demons are unorganized, scattered, without a
leader, and nothing is said about their origin. We also
find in the Veda a greatly stressed antithesis between
order (or truth, ṭta) and falsity (druh); but this opposi-
tion is not the basis of the entire religion, as it is in
Zoroastrianism.

Various ancient mythologies present a picture of a
tremendous battle between the gods and the giants,
monsters, or demons. Babylonian mythology tells of the
war of Marduk against Tiāmat. The Bible mentions
Leviathan, a sea monster of chaos, that God has van-
quished and will kill. Greek mythology relates the
battle of Zeus against the Titans. The mythology of
the Germans includes the past and future struggles of
the gods against the giants and against the demonic
powers, offspring of Loki. (German myths refer also
to the war of the Ases and Vanes, but this war seems
to be of a different kind, since Ases and Vanes seem
to be complementary forces whose struggle ends in a
reconciliation.) The Indian epic narrates the war of
the Pāndava, born of the gods, against the army of
their demon cousin; now this story is perhaps the
transposition of an older story in which the gods them-
selves fought the demons. These pictures of a gigantic
drama might suggest a dualism, but in none of these
examples is the dualism complete or systematic. The
two parties are always descended from one another
or from the same principle. Marduk is a descendent
of Tiāmat; Zeus and the Titans have the same origin;
Leviathan was created by God; the combatants of
Mahābhārata are in the same family; Loki is an Ase
like Odin who has a certain friendship for him.

Zoroastrianism. The Iranian dualism differs from the
others because of its systematic character. It implies
a concentration of all that is good around the great
god Ahura Mazdā or Ohrmazd, principle of truth; all
that is evil is concentrated around the Evil Spirit, Ahra
Mainyu or Ahriman, the power of falsehood. This
dualism establishes a nearly perfect symmetry between
the forces of good and those of evil, and the whole
religion is based on the idea of their incessant warfare.
Only at the end of time will the Evil Spirit be van-
quished completely.

According to tradition, this religion was founded by
Zoroaster who, if he is not a legendary figure, may
have lived at the latest around 600 B.C. but might have
been much older. The most general opinion is that he
reformed the old Indo-Iranian religion. In fact, there
are in the Gāthās of the Avesta indications of a pro-
found transformation. The word daēva, the Iranian
form of the root which among the Indo-Europeans
designated the gods, in the Avesta designates demons,
and some of the ancient rites witnessed by the Veda
are attacked. Certain customs practiced by the Magi,
and which other peoples regarded as impious (exposing
corpses to birds or dogs, consanguineous marriage),
seem to indicate a radical break with ancient beliefs.
Above all, there is in the Gāthās a constant aspiration
for a transformation, for a “renovation” of existence,
a renovation requiring struggles which will be termi-
nated only in the future. In all these hymns one feels
a constant concern to vanquish enemies, to convert
people to a certain doctrine, to combat a religion taken
to be false, and to fight against social forces taken to
be violent and oppressive. This systematic dualism,
dividing all of the world's creatures into good and evil
beings, could express the intransigeance and the intol-
erance of the revolutionary reformer preaching a new
order.

Was the Evil Spirit for Zoroaster completely inde-
pendent of Ahura Mazdā and co-eternal with him? We
cannot be sure of this. In one text of the Gāthās, the
Good Spirit (Spenta Mainyu) and the Evil One are
called “twins” and are said to “choose” truth and evil
respectively. According to certain scholars this shows
that the two spirits have the same origin and that the
evil one became evil by choice. According to other
scholars the word “twins” implies perhaps only a kind
of parallelism, and they remark that these two spirits
are represented as being from the beginning one good
and the other evil. (In fact the Gāthās do not distin-
guish clearly between choosing evil and being by na-
ture bad; the daēva and the wicked are said sometimes
to choose evil and sometimes to be sons of evil.) What-
ever the case may be, the Evil Spirit, in the formulas
of the Gāthās, is opposed to the Good Spirit but not
directly to Ahura Mazdā. It is true that the latter seems
at times to be identified with the Good Spirit, but the
two are sometimes distinguished from one another.
Perhaps, therefore, Ahura Mazdā was in primitive
Zoroastrianism above the battle.

But in later Zoroastrianism, Ohrmazd is completely
identified with the Good Spirit, and henceforth the Evil

One confronts him directly on the same plane. The
authors of the Pahlavi books (ninth century A.D.) assert
the independent origin of the two principles. This
evolution was justified moreover by the spirit of the
Gāthās, for the warlike atmosphere of irreconcilable
opposition that pervades these hymns should lead one
to deny any link between the adversaries.

The religion of Zoroaster is indeed a religion of
struggle; hence it is not a gentle one. “The one who
is good for the wicked is wicked” (Yasna, 46, 6). Cer-
tain beings in the world are regarded as the creation
of Ahriman, which practically amounts to being re-
garded as completely wicked. The basis of Zoroastri-
anism is morality, but it is a harsh morality which
demands above all, it seems, social discipline. The
religious duty of the Zoroastrian consisted in fulfilling
his function in society in the best possible manner.
Submission and work were the great virtues. In recip-
rocation this religion seems to have been concerned
with the protection of the workers against the forces
of anarchy, the protection of the farmer and shepherd
against the undisciplined warrior. There was a strong
hope that an improved order would be established.
Zoroastrianism is directed towards the future, it aspires
to progress, and includes an eschatology. The Zoro-
astrian rites symbolize and prepare the great future
“renovation” which will drive evil away once and for
all and unify the world.

Under the Sassanids a monistic trend developed in
the speculation called “Zurvanism.” According to the
Zurvanite myth Ohrmazd and Ahriman are both sons
of Zurvān, Infinite Time (that is to say, eternity). How-
ever, some recent studies tend to show that Zurvanism
was not generally taken to be a heresy, and was able
to mingle with orthodox Zoroastrianism. After all, to
say that Ohrmazd and Ahriman are sons of eternity
was perhaps a way of saying that they are eternal. In
any case, Zurvān was too abstract and too indeter-
minate to establish a real unity above the two opposing
principles.

The case is different with modern Parsees. They have
really become monists. They think that Ahriman is only
the symbol of what is evil in man. They reject what
is nevertheless the most fascinating characteristic of
Zoroastrianism: relating human goodness or badness to
cosmic powers, the human struggle to a struggle of
the whole universe, and not attenuating by any consid-
erations the opposition of good and evil.

II. DUALISM IN PHILOSOPHY

Western Philosophy. Pythagoras may already have
been a dualist, in two senses. On the one hand, the
Pythagoreans taught that all things are composed of
contraries: the one and the many, the limited and the
unlimited, the odd and the even, right and left, mascu-
line and feminine, rest and motion, the straight line
and the curve, light and darkness, good and evil, etc.
Now, these opposites seem to have been the various
forms of a single fundamental relation of contrariety.
On the other hand, they distinguished profoundly soul
and body, as is shown by their theory of the transmi-
gration of souls and by the dictum attributed to them
as well as to the Orphics: “The body is a tomb.”

Heraclitus and Parmenides appear to have attacked
pythagorean dualism, at least the dualism of contraries.
Heraclitus showed that the contraries are inseparable
and form a unity; Parmenides proclaimed that only
the one, immobile, eternal Being exists, whereas the
many, the moving, perishable things do not exist in
true reality.

Empedocles, on the contrary, continued to maintain
the two Pythagorean kinds of dualism. For him the
world is dominated alternately by two opposing prin-
ciples, Love and Hate, which produce respectively
unity and multiplicity. Furthermore, the soul for him
has a different nature than the body, and he tells of
a soul which, having fallen from the world of the gods,
moaned at seeing itself in “this unaccustomed place”
(frags. 118, 119).

Anaxagoras, in his turn, clearly distinguished two
kinds of beings: elements in general, that are mixtures
in which everything is mingled with everything else,
on the one hand, and on the other, the mind (voūs)
which alone exists apart, is pure, without admixture,
and which, on coming into the chaos of the elements,
puts order into them.

Plato does not teach any dogmas, but his dialogues
tend to support the view that the soul exists inde-
pendently of the body and that the intelligible world
is independent of the world perceived by the senses.
It is true that the latter world cannot be said really
to be, for only the intelligible, the Idea, constitutes
true Being. Yet the world of sense has also a kind of
existence. In the myth of the creation of the world,
the Demiurge, the good “Worker,” is not the only
cause of the universe; there is also another cause,
namely, Necessity. The Demiurge “persuades” Neces-
sity to direct most things towards the Good, but its
power is not unlimited (Timaeus 47e-48a). In the Re-
public (379b-380c), Socrates says that God is not the
cause of everything, but only of what is good. In the
Theaetetus (176a), he says: “It is necessary that there
should always be something contrary to the good.”

It has sometimes been supposed that Zoroastrianism
influenced Pythagorean and Platonic thought, but it
is hardly probable. The wicked soul mentioned in

Plato's Laws (896e-898c) does not appear as a cosmic
soul, and in the Statesman (270a), he repels the idea
that the world could be governed by two opposing
deities. Moral evil, for Plato, is due to the ignorance
produced in the soul by its union with the body.

Aristotle is much more of a monist than his teacher
Plato, whom he criticizes for having “separated” the
Idea from sensible things. He tries to restore a continu-
ity between the lower and the higher life; matter is,
for him, already potentially what form is in actuality.
He ties the soul in an intimate relationship to the body
when he defines it as the form or entelechy of a natural
body potentially possessing life. Yet there remains in
Aristotle something of the Platonic dualism, particu-
larly in his theory of the prime mover, an incorporeal
and separate substance; also in his theory of the intel-
lect which he seems to hold as separate from all the
other faculties of the soul, entering it as though it were
from the outside.

After Aristotle the Stoics and Epicureans are more
thorough monists, the first school having a spiritualistic
monism according to which the whole world is mind
or reason, the second having a materialistic monism
which reduces everything to atoms.

Christian philosophy at first leaned principally on
Plato, but from the thirteenth century onwards, theo-
logians made use chiefly of Aristotle, not without
modifying some of his theories in order to bring them
into harmony with Christianity.

In the Renaissance period Plato returned, and with
him dualism was revived. In the seventeenth century
Descartes sharply divided reality by defining mind
exclusively as a substance that thinks, and matter ex-
clusively as an extended substance, thus distinguishing
them radically from one another. This distinction,
which excludes any intermediary, allowed Descartes
to establish a clear, wholly mathematical science of
physics. Every fact in the material world was to be
explained solely by geometry and mechanics.

Descartes' successors did not tolerate this bifurcation
of reality into two substances. Spinoza made extension
and thought no longer two substances but two attri-
butes of the one substance God. Leibniz, although he
distinguished in a certain way the soul from the body,
pictured all reality on the model of thought.

Kant, in his chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason
entitled “Paralogism of the Ideality of the External
World” (Transcendental Dialectic, Book II), criticized
dualism insofar as it signified that thinking substance
and extended substance are things in themselves, but
he admitted it insofar as it could signify that subject
and object are quite distinct phenomena. To this divi-
sion within phenomena he added the distinction of
phenomena and things in themselves. For Kant there
are somehow two worlds: one is the world of phenom-
ena and the other, known only through consciousness
of moral duty, is reality in itself.

Philosophers coming after Kant tried to do away
with these profound divisions. Fichte made the free
subject the basis of everything, the ground for the
existence of the universe. Hegel brought the whole of
reality into a single chain by making contradiction, first
posited and then transcended, the law of all thought
and of all nature.

Thus the history of Western philosophy appears to
be an alternation of dualism and monism. On several
occasions philosophy has been renovated by a very
dualistic doctrine: Platonism, Cartesianism, and
Kantianism have initiated such renovations. However,
dualism was soon overcome and submerged by more
or less monistic doctrines. The teacher is a dualist, but
his pupils are not. It seems as though there was some-
thing too harsh and rough in dualism for most philoso-
phers to bear. They wish to reconcile everything, and
dualism disappoints them by the very fact that it posits
two principles and not one alone. They believe that
dualism is a failure, that it does not succeed in unifying
all of reality; they expect philosophy to unify every-
thing. But the dualistic philosophers have perhaps
judged that the human condition requires us only to
think and act well in the present; they have tried,
above all, to justify the clearest method of thinking
and the most certain morality. To confuse the body
more or less with thought is to lodge in the body a
mysterious force, which is impenetrable to clear sci-
ence, and which destroys the will to govern the body.

In our own twentieth century, Lovejoy has de-
scribed, under the title The Revolt Against Dualism,
the many attempts of contemporary philosophers to
refute or to avoid dualism; he believes that they have
all failed. Alain (1868-1951) has taught the moral value
of dualism in Cartesianism and maintained that dualism
is not a fault in a philosophy but, on the contrary, is
the most vigorous trait, revealing the energy which
makes sound thinking. Philosophical dualism does not
imply the condemnation of certain beings outside one's
self, but expresses a will to govern one's self.

Indian Philosophy. The dominant and best known
philosophy of India is the monistic Vedanta. But India
also has its dualistic philosophies. In particular, the
very ancient and very important Sāmkhya teaches that
both matter (or nature) and the Spirit have existed
throughout eternity.

Chinese Philosophy. The oldest Chinese distinguish
two fundamental powers, Yang and Yin. Yang is the
celestial principle, luminous, warm, masculine, active,

and creative; Yin is earthly, dark, cold, feminine, pas-
sive, and receptive. But the Chinese philosophers rep-
resent them generally as manifestations of the same
principle.

III. DUALISM IN THEOLOGY

Pre-Gnostic Dualism. Around the beginning of the
Christian era, dualistic ideas appeared in Judaism, in
which, however, they remain limited by the rigorous
monotheism. Whether due to the influence of the
Iranian religion or to the autonomous development of
Judaism, Jewish writers teach that God acts and even
has created the world by means of two opposing
powers. According to the Rule of Qumrān (III-IV),
two spirits created by God, the Prince of Lights and
the Angel of Darkness, dominate the world. Philo (ca.
13 B.C.-ca. A.D. 50) says, though only in a single text,
that God created the world by means of two powers,
one of which is the cause of good things, the other
of evil things (Quaestiones in Exodum, I, 23). Philo
is, moreover, a Platonist, and it is not certain that for
him matter was created by God. The Jewish Apoca-
lyptic opposes the present to the future world in a sort
of temporal dualism. But nowhere in Judaism is the
denial of the value of the world carried to the point
to which Gnosticism went and where even certain texts
of early Christianity extended. The Qumrān's angel of
darkness is not the “prince of the world”; the two
spirits are in the world “in equal proportion.”

Gnostic Dualism. Historians gave the name
“Gnosticism” at first to a group of Christian heresies
which appeared towards the end of the first century.
These various and numerous heresies had in common
their rejection of the Old Testament and especially of
the biblical doctrine of creation. The world is neither
created nor governed directly by God, but by inferior
blind powers that do not know God. The Yahweh of
the Bible, creator of the world, is only the chief of
these lower powers; he created without knowing the
true Good. The world is not of God (directly), and the
soul, a spark of the divine, is not of this world. The
soul, enslaved in this world, can be freed, become
conscious of its origin, and ascend to God only by grace
of gnosis, the supernatural knowledge brought by the
divine Savior.

To some extent, therefore, the Gnostics attributed
an origin to the world different from the soul's origin.
Moreover, they employed the Greek dualism of soul
and matter. Yet they were not completely dualistic,
for according to them the Creator was somehow re-
lated to the true God, as one of His angels or as an
offspring in the genealogy of emanations. Besides, the
true God, if He had not wished the Creation, had at
least permitted it. Thus their dualism was neither ab-
solute nor systematic. It resided above all in a feeling
that the world is alien to God, and that there is between
God and nature a gulf which cannot be crossed except
by God.

Gnosticism was particularly vigorous in the second
century. But, condemned by the Church of Rome to-
ward the middle of that century, it became more and
more syncretist. The later Gnostics, inheritors of a
Christianity detached from the Old Testament, saw no
difficulty in uniting it with pagan traditions (Platonism,
the Mysteries, Oriental religions). On the other hand,
from about the middle of the second century, we meet
ideas of a Gnostic nature no longer only among the
Christians, but in writings which seem to be pagan,
for example, the Hermetica. Gnostic ideas are also
found later in Islam, and in Judaism in the Kabbala.

Thus, after a certain epoch, Gnostic ideas seem to
be no longer tied necessarily to Christianity. This per-
mits many modern scholars to hold that Gnosticism
was not essentially a Christian heresy; that from its
origin, contrary to what the Church Fathers believed,
it was a great current of thought which, while mingling
with Christianity, existed apart from it and perhaps
even before it. These scholars have searched for its
origins principally in Zoroastrianism, in Hellenism, or
in certain trends of Judaism. Nevertheless, these re-
searches have not yet resulted in conclusions of any
certainty. The problem of the origins of Gnosticism
is still ardently discussed. It is true that after a certain
epoch Gnostic ideas spread beyond Christian circles,
but still one cannot be at all sure that these ideas were
not born there. No Gnostic text before Christianity is
known, and the most ancient known Gnostics are
Christians. In addition, it seems even more difficult to
explain the profound opposition between God and the
world by Hellenism, Zoroastrianism, or Judaism than
by the New Testament. In the fourth Gospel, for exam-
ple, the opposition between God and the world is
already emphasized nearly as much as among the
Gnostics.

It is possible that the crucifixion of Christ, that is
to say, the defeat of the Just One in the world, caused
this deep pessimism with regard to the world. Besides,
the Paulinist and Johannist idea that one could not be
saved except by divine Grace means that there is a
deep separation between nature and salvation.

Manicheism. Founded in the third century of our
era by the Persian Mani, Manicheism is one of the late,
syncretist forms of Gnosticism. Mani wanted to unite
Christianity (under its Gnostic form) with Zoroastrian-
ism, Buddhism, and Greek philosophy. In fact, the part
played by Gnostic Christianity is by far the most im-

portant part of his doctrine. But he made Gnostic
dualism more rigid and more systematic, reinforcing
it on the model of Zoroastrian dualism. With him the
two principles are truly independent and co-eternal.
Evil for him was identical with matter, but he de-
scribed evil as having traits which reminded one of
Ahriman.

Nobody was as consciously and voluntarily a dualist
as Mani. For him the positing of two principles was
the foundation of all true religion. By assembling
Gnostic myths, he constructed a great myth which
described the primitive separation of the two principles
(Light, the substance of the soul, and Darkness, that
is to say, matter); then their mixture, after Darkness
attacked Light and engulfed some of its parts; then
the way the particles of Light (souls) can be freed from
Darkness and return to their source. He announced that
some day all creatures would be brought back to their
origin, that the principles would once again be sepa-
rated, this time forever.

It is often believed that the Manicheans divided all
the creatures of the world into absolutely good or
absolutely evil beings. This tendency is, however,
rather typical of the Zoroastrians. For the Manicheans,
everything in the world was a mixture; pure goodness
and evil existed only in the principles. Moreover, the
Manicheans were neither violent nor intolerant; they
adapted their language to that of other religions,
thinking that there was something good in nearly all
of them. Salvation for them did not consist in fighting
against certain beings, but in fighting against matter
(Darkness) in themselves, and in escaping from the
world.

Dualistic Heresies of the Middle Ages. The dualistic
heresies of the Middle Ages—that of the Paulicians,
who flourished in Armenia and Asia Minor between
the seventh and the tenth centuries, and continued later
in the Balkans; that of the Bogomils, whose doctrine
started in Bulgaria and spread in the Balkans between
the tenth and the fifteenth centuries; that of the
Cathari, who flourished in Western Europe in the
twelfth and the thirteenth centuries—probably sprang
not from Manicheism but, like Manicheism itself, from
Gnosticism, which had continued in the Orient. The
principle of all these dualisms is still the profound
distinction between God and the world.

Augustinian Theology. It has sometimes been held
that Manicheism exerted some influence on the theol-
ogy of Saint Augustine, who, in his youth, was a
Manichean for nine years. But whatever there is of
dualism in him seems rather to come from Saint Paul
and Saint John the Evangelist, who, without themselves
being Gnostics, may have been the principal inspirers
of Gnosticism. Be that as it may, Saint Augustine kept
alive in occidental theology a rather strong dualistic
trend by his deep separation of Nature from Grace.
We find this sort of dualism again in Luther and in
the Jansenists.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. U. Bianchi, Il dualismo religioso (Rome, 1958). J.
Duchesne-Guillemin, Ormazd et Ahriman, l'aventure
dualiste dans l'antiquité (Paris, 1953); idem, la religion de
l'Iran ancien (Paris, 1962). G. Dumézil, Les dieux des
Germains (Paris, 1959). A. V. W. Jackson, Zoroastrian Studies
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SIMONE PÉTREMENT

[See also Epicureanism; Gnosticism; God; Heresy; Hermeti-
cism; Myth in Antiquity; Platonism; Pythagorean Doc-
trines; Right and Good; Sin and Salvation; Stoicism.]