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Let no one, therefore, look for an efficient cause of the evil will;
for it is not efficient, but deficient, as the will itself is not an
effecting of something, but a defect. For defection from that which
supremely is, to that which has less of being, this is to begin to
have an evil will. Now, to seek to discover the causes of these
defections, causes, as I have said, not efficient, but deficient,
is as if some one sought to see darkness, or hear silence. Yet both
of these are known by us, and the former by means only of the eye, the
latter only by the ear; but not by their positive actuality, but by
their want of it. Let no one, then seek to know from me what I know
that I do not know; unless he perhaps wishes to learn to be ignorant
of that of which all we know is, that it cannot be known. For those
things which are known not by their actuality, but by their want of
it, are known, if our expression may be allowed and understood, by
not knowing them, that by knowing them they may be not known. For
when the eyesight surveys objects that strike the sense, it nowhere
sees darkness but where it begins, not to see. And so no other sense
but the ear can perceive silence, and yet it is only perceived by not
hearing. Thus, too, our mind perceives intelligible forms by
understanding them; but when they are deficient, it knows them by not
knowing them; for "who can understand defects?"
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