from God permeates each and every finite thing.  God as one, whole, and indivisible, is perpetually present with his eternal process, to everything, everywhere.  When Augustin teaches that God of his own free will, subject to no necessity, by His own Word created the world out of nothing, this statement might be taken in connection with his view of the ab- solute simplicity of God and the consequent denial of distinction between being, willing, doing, etc.  The easiest way to get over the difficulty involved in creation was to maintain the simultaneous creation of all things.  The six days of creation in Genesis are an accom- modation to human modes of thinking.  In some expressions Augustin approaches the Platonic doctrine of the ideal or archetypal world.  Finite things, so far as they exist, are es- sence, i.e., God; so far as they are not essence they do not exist at all.  Thus the distinction between God and the world is almost obliterated.  Again, whatever is finite and derivative is subject to negation or nothingness.  Thus he goes along with Plato and Plotinus to the verge of denying the reality of derived existence, and so narrowly escapes pantheism. It is easy to see how effectively this conception of creation might be employed against the Manichæan notion of the creation as something forced upon God by the powers of evil, and as a mere expedient for the gradual liberation of his imprisoned elements.  The Manichæan limitation of God and his domain by the bordering Kingdom of Darkness, was in sheer opposition to Augustin’s view of the indivisibility of God and his presence as a whole everywhere and always.  Augustin’s theory that nature or essence, as far as it has ex- istence is God, is quite the antithesis of Mani’s dualism, especially of his supposition that the Kingdom of Darkness is essentially and wholly evil.  Augustin argued that even the in- habitants of the Kingdom of Darkness, and the King of Darkness himself, according to Mani’s own representations, are good so far as they have essence or nature, and evil only so far as they are non-existent. 30 With Augustin’s Platonizing view of creation is closely connected his theory of evil and his doctrine of divine providence.  Evil with him, as with the Platonists, has no substantial existence.  It is only privation of good.  It is wanting in essence, substance, truth,—is in short mere negation, and so cannot have God for its efficient cause or author, or be referred to God.  God would not have permitted evil unless by His own supreme power he had been able to make good use of it.  He attempts, with some success, to show the advantages of the permission of evil in the world.  God made all things good from the angels of heaven to the lowest beasts and herbs of the earth.  Augustin delighted, with the Platonists, in dwelling upon the goodness of nature as shown in the animal and vegetable worlds, as well as in the great cosmical phenomena.  Each creature of God has its place, some a higher, some a lower, but all so far as they conform to the idea of their creation, or to their nature, are good.  So far as they fall short of this idea they are evil. This principle Augustin applied with great force to the confutation of the Manichæan view of the substantiality and permanence of evil.  This may be regarded as the central point 42 Augustin and the Manichæans.