" But the Platonists never argued that evil’s lack of ultimate reality meant that there was no moral evil in the world. Plato was well aware of wars, murders, and lies. Evil exists, but it exists as a lack of good, just as holes in a Swiss cheese exist only as lack of cheese. The evil of a lie is the absence of truth. Plato did not think that the nonbeing of evil removed evil from the world, only that it removed responsibility for evil from the creator. Evil arose not from the God, but from matter. "

― Jeffrey Burton Russell , Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History (Revised)