After these matters, then, he thinks that he can make us acquainted in a
few words with the questions regarding the nature of evil, which have
been variously discussed in many important treatises, and which have
received very opposite explanations. His words are: “There neither were
formerly, nor are there now, nor will there be again, more or fewer
evils in the world [than have always been]. For the nature of all things
is one and the same, and the generation of evils is always the same.” He
seems to have paraphrased these words from the discussions in the
_Theœtetus_, where Plato makes Socrates say: “It is neither possible for
evils to disappear from among men, nor for them to become established
among the gods,” and so on. But he appears to me not to have understood
Plato correctly, although professing to include all truth[731] in this
one treatise, and giving to his own book against us the title of _A True
Discourse_. For the language in the _Timœus_, where it is said, “When
the gods purify the earth with water,” shows that the earth, when
purified with water, contains less evil than it did before its
purification. And this assertion, that there at one time were fewer
evils in the world, is one which we make, in harmony with the opinion of
Plato, because of the language in the _Theœtetus_, where he says that
“evils cannot disappear from among men.”
Footnote 731:
ὁ τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἐκπεριλαμβάνων.