Duʹalism

A system of philosophy which refers all things that exist to two ultimate principles. It is eminently a Persian doctrine. The Orphic poets made the ultimate principles of all things to be Water and Night, or Time and Necessity. In theology the Manicheʹan doctrine is dualistic. In modern philosophy it is opposed to monism (q.v.), and insists that the creator and creation, mind and body, are distinct entities. That creation is not deity, and that mind is not an offspring of matter. (See Monism.)