Note 1041 — Chapter XIII · MANES AND THE MANICHAEANS

This is really the crux of the whole question. If the idea could be traced back to the philosophers of Ionia (e.g. Heraclitus of Ephesus) and their theory of eternal strife and discord being the cause of all mundane phenomena, it is difficult to say whence the Ionians themselves derived it, save from Persia. We can, of course, suppose, if we please, that the Persians did not invent it de novo, but took it over from some of their subjects. Among these, the Babylonians, for instance, from the earliest times portrayed their demons as not only attempting to invade the heaven of the gods, but as being in perpetual warfare with one another. But the very little we know of Babylonian philosophy would lead us to think that it inclined towards pantheism of a materialistic kind rather than to dualism.