With respect to the evil spirits or intelligences, which, in the Zoroastrian system, stood over against the good ones, the teaching of the early reformers seems to have been less clear.  The old divinities, except where adopted into the new creed, were in a general way called Devas, “fiends” or “devils,” in contrast with the Ahuras, or “gods.”  These devas were represented as many in number, as artful, malicious, deceivers and injurers of mankind, more especially of the Zoroastrians or Ormazd-worshippers, as inventors of spells and lovers of the intoxicating Soma draught.  Their leading characteristics were “destroying” and “lying.”  They were seldom or never called by distinct names.  No account was given of their creation, nor of the origin of their wickedness.  No single superior intelligence, no great Principle of Evil, was placed at their head.  Ahriman (Angro-mainyus) does not occur in the Gathas as a proper name.  Far less is there any graduated hierarchy of evil, surrounding a Prince of Darkness, with a sort of court, antagonistic to the angelic host of Ormazd, as in the latter portions of the Zendavesta and in the modern Parsee system.

Thus Dualism proper, or a belief in two uncreated and independent principles, one a principle of good and the other a principal of evil, was no part of the original Zoroastrianism.  At the same time we find, even in the Gathas, the earliest portions of the Zondavesta, the germ out of which Dualism sprung.  The contrast between good and evil is strongly and sharply marked in the Gathas; the writers continually harp upon it, their minds are evidently struck with this sad antithesis which colors the whole moral world to them; they see everywhere a struggle between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, purity and impurity; apparently they are blind to the evidence of harmony and agreement in the universe, discerning nothing anywhere but strife, conflict, antagonism.  Nor is this all.  They go a step further, and personify the two parties to the struggle.  One is a “white” or holy “Spirit” (cpento mainyus), and the other a “dark spirit” (angro mainyus).  But this personification is merely poetical or metaphorical, not real.  The “white spirit” is not Ahura-mazda, and the “dark spirit” is not a hostile intelligence.  Both resolve themselves on examination into mere figures of speech—­phantoms of poetic imagery—­abstract notions, clothed by language with an apparent, not a real, personality.

It was natural that, as time went on, Dualism should develop itself out of the primitive Zoroastrianism.  Language exercises a tyranny over thought, and abstractions in the ancient world were ever becoming persons.  The Iranian mind, moreover, had been strack, when it first turned to contemplate the world, with a certain antagonism; and, having once entered this track, it would be compelled to go on, and seek to discover the origin of the antagonism, the cause (or causes) to which it was to be ascribed.  Evil seemed most