their contrary lacks can be given the name of darkness. Thus there is the light
1 26 Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis nobody, after all, who would suppose that the light was made in such a way that it was all mixed up with the darkness, and so needed to be separated from it later on;26 but from the sheer fact of light being made there followed the division between light and darkness. For whatfellowship does light have with darkness? (2 Cor 6: 14). So God then divided between the light and the darkness simply by making the light, the absence of which is called darkness. And the difference between light and darkness is the same as the difference between being clothed and being naked, or between full and empty, and so forth.
The various meanings darkness can have
24. We have already said above in how many ways light can be understood; their contrary lacks can be given the name of darkness. Thus there is the light which can be seen by these bodily eyes and which is itself bodily or corporeal, such as the light of the sun and moon and stars and anything of that sort; its contrary is darkness, when some place lacks this light. Next there is the light that is the sentient life which is able to distinguish the things that are referred through the body to the soul for judgment, such as white from black, melodious from cacophonous, sweet-smelling from stinking, sweet from bitter, hot from cold, and so on and so forth. The light, after all, which is perceived by the eyes is one thing, that which enables it to be perceived through the eyes is another. The first, clearly, is in the body, while the second, though it gets from the body the things it perceives, is for all that in the soul. The darkness contrary to this is a kind of insensitivity, or perhaps it would be better to call it insensuality,27 that is, an inability to perceive things, even though things are being presented that could be perceived if there were present in that life this light by which perception takes place.
And this is not the case when the services provided by the body are lacking, as in blind or deaf people, because this light we are now talking about is present in their minds, but the body's instruments are wanting. Nor is it like the way no voice is heard in the silence, when this light is there in the soul and the body's instruments are in order, but nothing is being brought in to be perceived. So you don't lack this light if you fail to perceive anything from these causes; but it is lacking when there is no such power in the soul, which is not then usually called
26. Augustine must have known perfectly well that this is precisely what the Manichees believed. One supposes that he is pretending they do not exist, just to show his contempt for them. 27. 1nsensualitas. What the distinction is which he is making is not at all clear. 1 suspect that he invented this word. The only reference for it given by Lewis & Short is to Augustine's work Answer to Fausius, a Manichean, which he wrote shortly after becoming a bishop, that is to say, some years after this book on Genesis. There he uses it to signify the non-sentient character of stones, as distinct, perhaps, from the insensibility of an unconscious person, or animal, or the specific insensibility of a person or animal that is blind.