Chapter 6.—Whether Even Vices Themselves as Objects of Intellectual Apprehension are to Be Preferred to Light as an Object of Sense Perception, and are to Be Attributed to 98 God as Their Author.  Vice of the Mind and Certain Defects are Not Rightly to Be Counted Among Intelligible Things.  Defects Themselves Even If They Should Be Counted Among Intelligible Things Should Never Be Put Before Sensible Things.  If Light is Visible by God, Much More is the Soul, Even If Vicious, Which in So Far as It Lives is an Intelligible Thing.  Passages of Scripture are Adduced by the Manichæans to the Contrary. At this point, in case some one of them, cautious and watchful, now also more studious than pertinacious, had admonished me that the inquiry is not about vicious souls but about vices themselves, which, seeing that they are not known by corporeal sense, and yet are known, can only be received as objects of intellectual apprehension, which if they excel all objects of sense, why can we not agree in attributing light to God as its author, but only a sacrilegious person would say that God is the author of vices; I should have replied to the man, if either on the spur of the moment, as is customary to the worshippers of the good God, a solution of this question had darted like lightning from on high, or a solution had been previously prepared.  If I had not deserved or was unable to avail myself of either of these methods, I should have deferred the undertaking, and should have confessed that the thing propounded was difficult to discern and arduous.  I should have withdrawn to myself, prostrated myself before God, groaned aloud asking Him not to suffer me to halt in mid space, when I should have moved forward with assured arguments, asking Him that I might not be compelled by a doubtful question either to subordinate intelligible things to sensible, and to yield, or to call Himself the author of vices; since either of these alternatives would have been absolutely full of falsehood and impiety.  I can by no means suppose that He would have deserted me in such a frame of mind.  Rather, in His own ineffable way, He would have admonished me to consider again and again whether vices of mind concerning which I was so troubled should be reckoned among intelligible things.  But that I might find out, on account of the weakness of my inner eye, which rightly befell me on account of my sins, I should have devised some sort of stage for gazing upon spiritual things in visible things themselves, of which we have by no means a surer knowledge, but a more confident familiarity.  Therefore I should straightway have inquired, what properly pertains to the sensation of the eyes.  I should have found that it is the color, the dominion of which the light holds.  For these are the things that no other sense touches, for the motions and mag- nitudes and intervals and figures of bodies, although they also can be perceived by the eyes, yet to perceive such is not their peculiar function, but belongs also to touch.  Whence I should have gathered that by as much as yonder light excels other corporeal and sensible things, by so much is sight more noble than the other senses.  The light therefore having been selected from all the things that are perceived by bodily sense, by this [light] I should have striven, and in this of necessity I should have placed that stage of my inquiry.  I should Whether Even Vices Themselves as Objects of Intellectual Apprehension are to Be Preferred to Light as an Object of Sense Perception, and are to Be Attributed to God as Their Author.  Vice of the Mind and Certain Defects are Not Rightly to Be Counted Among Intelligible Things.  Defects Themselves Even If They Should Be Counted Among Intelligible Things Should Never Be Put Before Sensible Things.  If Light is Visible by God, Much More is the Soul, Even If Vicious, Which in So Far as It Lives is an Intelligible Thing.  Passages of Scripture are Adduced by the Manichæans to the Contrary. 166 Whether Even Vices Themselves as Objects of Intellectual Apprehension are…