Thinking, then, that I had somehow been put in good frame of mind, I withdrew to my own house. But on the following day — that is, today — coming out I saw two of the same kind (I mean human beings) reviling one another, and yet another again trying to do violence to his neighbor. And by now some were even beginning to dare things more terrible.
For one stripped a corpse, and exposed again to the sun the body that had already been hidden in the earth, and outraged the image like to his own, leaving the corpse as food for dogs.
Another bared his sword and advanced upon a man like himself. The one wished to secure his safety by flight, but the other did not cease pursuing, nor was he willing to master his rage. And what need is there to say more, but that, charging upon him, he straightway struck him with the sword? The man became a suppliant to his neighbor and stretched out his hands in entreaty, and was willing to give up his garment, asking only to keep his life. But the other did not break his fury, nor pity his fellow man, nor would he look upon himself in that one through their common image; rather, like a savage beast, he set to his prey with the sword, and now even brought his mouth to the body like his own — so great was he in his rage. And one could see the one already lying dead, and the other still despoiling him and not even covering the body with earth, which he had stripped of its garment.
Besides these, there was yet another who wished to toy with his neighbor's wife, plundering another man's marriage and urging her to turn to an unlawful bed, unwilling that the wedded husband should become a true father.
From this I began to believe even the tragedies, and the Thyestean banquet truly seemed to me to have happened; I believe also the unlawful incest of Oedipus, and I do not disbelieve the strife of the brothers by the sword.
Having become, then, a spectator of so many and such things, I began to inquire whence these come, what is the source of their motion, and who it is that has contrived so many evils for men, whence comes the discovery of them, and who is their teacher. And I was not able to dare to call God the maker of these things; yet neither could I say that they have their subsistence from Him, nor their constitution of being. For how could it be possible to conceive these things concerning God?
For He is good and the maker of better things, and nothing of base things attaches to Him; nor is He by nature one who delights in such things; rather He forbids even their coming to be, and casts off those who delight in them, but receives those who flee from them. And how was it not absurd to say that God is the craftsman of these things — He who refuses them? For He would not have willed them not to be, if He Himself had been their first maker; for He wishes those who draw near to Him to become His imitators.
Hence it seemed to me irrational to attribute these things to Him, either as having come to be from Him, or (even if one must by all means concede that it is possible for something to come to be from things that are not) that He Himself also made the evils. For He who made them from non-being into being would not again destroy them from being into no-longer-being. Or is one to say that there was once a time when God delighted in evils, but now no longer? — which seems to me impossible to say concerning God; for it is foreign to His nature to attribute this to Him.
Therefore it seemed to me that something coexists with Him, whose name is matter, out of which He fashioned the things that are, distinguishing and ordering them well by wise art; and from this matter the evils too seem to come. For since it was without quality and without form, and besides this was borne along in disorder and stood in need of God's art, He did not begrudge so as to leave it forever to be borne along thus, but began to fashion, and willed to separate the fairest things from its worst; and thus then He fashioned whatever of it was fit for God to fashion. But whatever of it was, so to speak, dross-like and unfit for fashioning, this, being unsuited to the work and in no way befitting Him, He left as it was. And from these it seems to me that the evils now flow in among men. Thus it seemed to me to think rightly.
But you, my friend, if anything seems to you to have been ill stated by me, raise the objection and speak; for I greatly long to hear about such matters.