later. St. Augustine is on less secure ground when he says that evil
is simply the splash of dark colour which gives relief to the picture;
and when in other places he speaks of it as simple privation of good.
But here again he closely follows Plotinus.[204]

St. Augustine was not hostile to the idea of a World-Soul; he regards
the universe as a living organism;[205] but he often warns his readers
against identifying God and the world, or supposing that God is merely
immanent in creation. The Neoplatonic teaching about the relation of
individual souls to the World-Soul may have helped him to formulate
his own teaching about the mystical union of Christians with Christ.
His phrase is that Christ and the Church are "_una persona_."

St. Augustine arranges the ascent of the soul in seven stages.[206]
But the higher steps are, as usual, purgation, illumination, and
union. This last, which he calls "the vision and contemplation of
truth," is "not a step, but the goal of the journey." When we have
reached it, we shall understand the wholesomeness of the doctrines
with which we were fed, as children with milk; the meaning of such
"hard sayings" as the resurrection of the body will become plain to
us. Of the blessedness which attends this state he says
elsewhere,[207] "I entered, and beheld with the mysterious eye of my
soul the light that never changes, above the eye of my soul, above my
intelligence. It was something altogether different from any earthly
illumination. It was higher than my intelligence because it made me,
and I was lower because made by it. He who knows the truth knows that
light, and he who knows that light knows eternity. Love knows that
light." And again he says,[208] "What is this which flashes in upon
me, and thrills my heart without wounding it? I tremble and I burn; I
tremble, feeling that I am unlike Him; I burn, feeling that I am like