and not being sufficiently aware of the relation between the ancient Gallic and Germanic tongues.  Now the so-called Giants, who wished to scale the heavens, were new Celts who followed the path of their ancestors; and Jupiter, although of their kindred, as it were, was constrained to resist them.  Just so did the Visigoths established in Gallic territory resist, together with the Romans, other peoples of Germania and Scythia, who succeeded them under Attila their leader, he being at that time in control of the Scythian, Sarmatic and Germanic tribes from the frontiers of Persia up to the Rhine.  But the pleasure one feels when one thinks to find in the mythologies of the gods some trace of the old history of fabulous times has perhaps carried me too far, and I know not whether I shall have been any more successful than Goropius Becanus, Schrieckius, Herr Rudbeck and the Abbe de la Charmoye.

144.  Let us return to Zoroaster, who led us to Oromasdes and Arimanius, the sources of good and evil, and let us assume that he looked upon them as two eternal principles opposed to each other, although there is reason to doubt this assumption.  It is thought that Marcion, disciple of Cerdon, was of this opinion before Manes.  M. Bayle acknowledges that these men used lamentable arguments; but he thinks that they did not sufficiently [214] recognize their advantages or know how to apply their principal instrument, which was the difficulty over the origin of evil.  He believes that an able man on their side would have thoroughly embarrassed the orthodox, and it seems as though he himself, failing any other, wished to undertake a task so unnecessary in the opinion of many people.  ‘All the hypotheses’ (he says, Dictionary, v., ‘Marcion’, p. 2039) ’that Christians have established parry but poorly the blows aimed at them:  they all triumph when they act on the offensive; but they lose their whole advantage when they have to sustain the attack.’  He confesses that the ‘Dualists’ (as with Mr. Hyde he calls them), that is, the champions of two principles, would soon have been routed by a priori reasons, taken from the nature of God; but he thinks that they triumph in their turn when one comes to the a posteriori reasons, which are taken from the existence of evil.

145.  He treats of the matter with abundant detail in his Dictionary, article ‘Manichaeans’, p. 2025, which we must examine a little, in order to throw greater light upon this subject:  ’The surest and clearest ideas of order teach us’, he says, ’that a Being who exists through himself, who is necessary, who is eternal, must be single, infinite, all powerful, and endowed with all kinds of perfections.’  This argument deserves to have been developed more completely.  ‘Now it is necessary to see’, he goes on, ’if the phenomena of nature can be conveniently explained by the hypothesis of one single principle.’  I have explained it sufficiently by showing that there