having permitted evil on earth, that the world was a place of trial, and
that evil was only a way of putting man to the test and discovering what
were his merits. It had its notions on the rewards and penalties beyond the
grave, hell for the wicked and heaven for the good, as had been known to
antiquity, but added purgatory, a place for both punishment and
purification by punishment, an entirely Platonic theory, which Plato may
have inspired but did not himself entertain. Finally, it was a complete
philosophy answering, and that in a manner often admirable, all the
questions that mankind put or could ever put.

And, as so often happens, that has proved a weakness and a strength to it:
a weakness because embarrassed with subtle, complicated, insoluble
questions wherein mankind will always be involved, it was forced to engage
in endless discussions wherein the bad or feeble reasons advanced by this
or that votary compromised the whole work; a strength because whoever
brings a rule of life is practically compelled to support it by general
ideas bearing on the relations of things and to give it a place in a
general survey of the world; otherwise he appears impotent, weak,
disqualified to give that very rule of life, incapable of replying to the
interrogations raised by that rule of life; and finally, lacking in
authority.

SCHISMS AND HERESIES.--Right or wrong, and it is difficult and
highly hazardous to decide the question, Christianity was a complete
philosophy, which was why it had its schisms and heresies, a certain number
of sincere Christians not resolving the metaphysical questions in the way
of the majority. Heresies were innumerable; only the two shall be cited
which are deeply interesting in the history of philosophy. Manes, an Arab
(and Arabia was then a Persian province), revived the old Zoroastrian
doctrine of two principles of good and evil, and saw in the world two