" As they said
this, I rejoiced in heart that I was permitted to converse with angels
of such innocence, as to be entirely ignorant of the nature and meaning
of adultery: wherefore I was free to converse with them, and I
instructed them as follows: "Do you not know, that there exist both good
and evil, and that good is from creation, but not evil; and still that
evil viewed in itself is not nothing, although it is nothing of good?
From creation there exists good, and also good in the greatest degree
and in the least; and when this least becomes nothing, there rises up on
the other side evil: wherefore there is no relation or progression of
good to evil, but a relation and progression of good to a greater and
less good, and of evil to a greater and less evil; for in all things
there are opposites. And since good and evil are opposites, there is an
intermediate, and in it an equilibrium, in which evil acts against good;
but as it does not prevail, it stops in a _conatus_. Every man is
educated in this equilibrium, which, because it is between good and
evil, or, what is the same, between heaven and hell, is a spiritual
equilibrium, which, with those who are in it, produces a state of
freedom.
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