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Illumination

Light and colour – these two are inseparably linked. Colours could not exist without light; and light when it refracts creates colours, like the rainbow on a rainy day. Just as the world around us is illuminated and made colourful by the sunlight, so according to St. Augustine of Hippo the world of true ideas is illuminated by a Divine light of reason: "The mind needs to be enlightened by light from outside itself, so that it can participate in truth, because it is not itself the nature of truth." Other philosophers in the middle ages also say similar things, for example the English thinker Roger Marston: "the eternal light, irradiating the human mind, makes a certain active impression on it, from which a certain passive impression is left in it, which is the formal principle of cognizing the unchanging truths". So, Divine ideas are illuminated by the light of reason, but outside, one can creatively express them using ... read more