Since you have a longing to inquire concerning the origin of evils, I will come to the discussion of these. And I wish to learn a few things from you. — Do the evils seem to you to be substances, or qualities of substances? VALENTINIANUS: It seems to me well said to call them qualities of substances. ORTHODOXUS: And was matter quality-less and formless? VALENTINIANUS: So I declared, taking it for granted, in the argument.
ORTHODOXUS: Then if the evils are qualities of substances, and matter was quality-less, and you said God is the maker of the qualities, then God will also be the craftsman of the evils. Since, then, not even thus is it possible to call God free of responsibility for evils, it seems to me superfluous to attach matter to Him. But if you have anything to say against this, begin the argument. — If our inquiry were arising out of contentiousness, I would not ask to define a second time concerning the evils; but since we make the examination of arguments for the sake of friendship rather, and of benefit to one's neighbor, I ask you to allow defining from the beginning concerning these.
VALENTINIANUS: My resolve, I think, has long been clear to you, as well as my zeal in the discussion: that I do not wish to win by speaking a plausible falsehood, but that the truth be shown forth with accurate examination; and I clearly perceive that you too are so disposed. Wherefore, in whatever manner you think you can find the truth, use that, abashed by nothing. For you will benefit not only yourself by using the better course, but assuredly me as well, concerning the things of which I am ignorant.
ORTHODOXUS: You seem to me to be presenting the evils too as being certain substances; for I do not see them being anything apart from substances. Since, then, my good man, you say that the evils too are substances, it is necessary to examine the account of substance. Does it seem to you that substance is a certain bodily constitution? VALENTINIANUS: It does.
ORTHODOXUS: And does the bodily constitution itself exist by itself, not needing something upon whose coming-to-be it will receive its being? VALENTINIANUS: So it is.
ORTHODOXUS: Then if substance is a certain bodily constitution, and the bodily constitution does not need something upon whose coming-to-be it will receive its being, while the evils are activities of something, and the activities need something upon whose coming-to-be they receive their being, then the evils will not be substances.
But if the evils are substances, and murder is an evil, then murder is a substance; yet surely murder is the activity of someone — therefore murder is not a substance. But if you wish the one who acts to be a substance, I too agree. For instance, the murderer, a man: insofar as he is a man, he is a substance; but the murder which he does is not a substance, but a certain work of the substance.
Indeed we call a man at one time evil because of committing murder, and at another time again good because of doing good. And these names are woven into the substance from the accidents belonging to it, which are not the substance itself. For neither is murder the substance, nor again adultery, nor any of the like evils. But just as from grammar one is called a grammarian, and from rhetoric an orator, and from medicine a physician — the substance being neither medicine nor rhetoric nor grammar, but receiving its appellation from the accidents belonging to it, from which it thus seems to be named, being itself neither one of them — likewise it appears that the substance also takes its name from things that seem to be evils, being itself neither one of them.
And conceive of it likewise for me: if you fashion in your mind some other cause of evils for men — as also that one, insofar as he acts in men and prompts them to do evils, is himself also evil from the things he does. For on this account that one too is said to be evil, because he is the maker of evils. But the things one does are not himself, but his activities, from which he receives the appellation of being called evil.
For if we should say that he himself is the things he does — and he does murders and adulteries and thefts and whatever is like these — he will be these things. But if these things are himself, and these things have their constitution whenever they come to be, and ceasing to come to be they also cease to exist, and these things come to be by men, then men will be the makers of these things, and the causes both of their being and of their no-longer-being.
But if you say that these things are his activities, then he has his being evil from the things he does, not from the things by which he is a substance. And we said that 'evil' is predicated from the accidents belonging to the substance,
which are not the substance, as the physician is named from medicine. But if he is evil from the things by which he acts, and the things he does take a beginning of being, then that one too began to be evil, and these very evils also began. But if this is so, he will not be evil from eternity, nor are the evils uncreated, by virtue of the fact that they are said to be created by him.