To Florus 5.44

I point out, however, that in your writings you too habitually say darkness is not a creature, but that obscurity remains through the absence of light: darkening is nothing other than the exclusion of brightness. What is excluded you call a creature; what remains you call darkness. This view is indeed widespread among philosophers. I am not now asking whether it should be regarded as true or false. I press this point: you say darkness is nothing other than nothing. Yet you argue that evil arose in a human being, God’s work, because he was made from nothing. You therefore affirm that this nothing was evil’s cause, and you also call this nothing darkness. You thus say the necessity of evil descends from the condition of darkness. Even in this you do not differ from your teacher, since both of you attribute an evil will to eternal darkness.