to this, Mani was born of Magian parents about 240 A.D.  He became skilled in music, mathematics, geography, astronomy, painting, medicine, and in the Scriptures.  The account of his ascendancy over Sapor and his subsequent martyrdom is substantially the same as that of the Fihrist.  Albîrunî’s work (see bibliography preceding) confirms the account given by the Fihrist.  The conversion of Sapor to Manichæism (in A.D. 261) is said to be confirmed by Sassanian inscriptions (see Journal of Asiat. Soc. 1868 p. 310-’41, and ibid. p. 376, and 1871 p. 416). The Fihrist’s account contains a long list of the works of Mani, which is supplemented by other Oriental and Western notices.  The list is interesting as showing the wide range of Mani’s literary activity, or at least of the literature that was afterwards connected with his name. 2.  Mani’s System.  As the life of Mani has been the subject of diversified and contradict- ory representations, so also have his doctrines.  Here, too, we must make the account given by the Fihrist fundamental.  It will be convenient to treat the subject under the following heads:  Theology, Cosmogony, Anthropology, Soteriology, Cultus, Eschatology, and Ethics. (1.)  Theology.  Mani taught dualism in the most unqualified sense.  Zoroastrianism is commonly characterized as dualistic, yet it is so in no such sense as is Manichæism.  Accord- ing to the Fihrist, "Mani teaches:  Two subsistences form the beginning of the world, the one light the other darkness; the two are separated from each other.  The light is the first most glorious being, limited by no number, God himself, the King of the Paradise of Light.  He has five members:  meekness, knowledge, understanding, mystery, insight; and five other spiritual members:  love, faith, truth, nobleness, and wisdom.  He maintained further- more that the God of light, with these his attributes, is without beginning, but with him two equally eternal things likewise exist, the one the atmosphere, the other the earth.  Mani adds:  and the members of the atmosphere are five [the first series of divine attributes mentioned above are enumerated]; and the members of the earth are five [the second series].  The other being is the darkness, and his members are five:  cloud, burning, hot wind, poison, and darkness.  Mani teaches:  that the light subsistence borders immediately on the dark subsistence, without a dividing wall between them; the light touches with its (lowest) side the darkness, while upwards to the right and left it is unbounded.  Even so the darkness is endless downwards and to the right and left." This represents Mani’s view of the eternally existent status quo, before the conflict began, and the endless state after the conflict ceases.  What does Mani mean, when he enumerates two series of five attributes each as members of God, and straightway postulates the co- eternity of atmosphere and earth and divides these self-same attributes between the latter?  Doubtless Mani’s theology was fundamentally pantheistic, i.e., pantheistic within the limits of each member of the dualism.  The God of Light himself is apparently conceived of as transcending thought.  Atmosphere and Earth (not the atmosphere and earth that we know, 17 The Manichæan System.