If we grant the existence of evils external to the soul, we shall
be forced to decide about their relation to sickness, ugliness, or
poverty. Sickness has been explained as a lack or excess of material
bodies which fail to support order or measure. The cause of ugliness,
also, has been given as deficient adjustment of matter to form. Poverty
has been described as the need or lack of objects necessary to life as
a result of our union with matter, whose nature is (the Heraclitian and
Stoic) "indigence." From such definitions it would follow that we are
not the principle of evil, and are not evil in ourselves, for these
evils existed before us. Only in spite of themselves would men yield
to vice. The evils of the soul are avoidable, but not all men possess
the necessary firmness. Evil, therefore, is caused by the presence
of matter in sense-objects, and is not identical with the wickedness
of men. For wickedness does not exist in all men; some triumph over
wickedness, while they who do not even need to triumph over it, are
still better. In all cases men triumph over evil by those of their
faculties that are not engaged in matter.