The Religion of the Manichees

Manichaeism, now extinct, was a formidable rival to Christianity in the fourth and fifth centuries, and was a religion professed in parts of Central Asia for a thousand years. Our authorities for the study of it are the newly discovered fragments of Manichee literature from Turfan, in Chinese Turkestan, and the polemical writings of Mohammedans and Christians, including the Refutations by S. Ephraim, lately deciphered by C. W. Mitchell. Manichaeism is dualistic, in that the two principles of Light and Dark are regarded as self-existent and eternal, but they ought to remain separate: this world of sense originated from a disastrous mixture of the two. It is, in fact, a Smudge. The goodness of God, the Lord of the realm of Light, is shown not in improving the world but in devising means for getting rid of it altogether, for evil consists in the mixture of Light and Dark. Neither the fantastic mythology of Mani, nor the ascetic organization of the Manichees, appears to be derived from anything east of Babylonia. Nor is it pessimistic in the sense of a belief in the ultimate triumph of evil; unregulated desire will always continue to exist, but it will be confined to its own appropriate sphere.