Note 9 — INTRODUCTION

In speaking of evil and a possible Prince of Darkness, it is necessary to proceed carefully, if we are confined, like Éliphas Lévi, within the measures of a theory of opposites. The definition of evil as the absence of rectitude is entirely insufficient to cover the facts of experience; it is that indeed, but it is also as much more as may be necessary to account for its positive and active side. The truth is that positive and negative are on both sides of the eternal balance of things postulated by the theory. So far as it goes, evil is the absence of rectitude, and, so far as it goes also, rectitude is the absence of evil; but the vital aspects of good and bad have slipped between the fingers of definition in both cases.