Augustine's Divided Line Augustine's statement that man cannot reach the truth through reason in his temporal life constitutes his initial departure from the ancients and entails the need for structuring completely new of the relationship between men and good. In distinguishing between the nature of God and that of man, Augustine maintains that the nature of man - unlike that of God - is corruptible, and is therefore "deprived of the light of eternal truth" (XI, 22). This overturns Plato's thought, since no contemplation or argument will now be able to bring man closer to a truth that exists on a level that "exceeds the reach of the human mind" (XXI, 5). If reason is as defective an instrument as man himself, how then can man know the highest good if he is forced to blindly grope for it in a state of sin without any help from the forces of his mind? It is this question that is the basis for the division of existence made by Augustine into the City of Man and the City of God and the articulation of a system of vice and the fight against vice that keeps man anchored to the City of Man and prevents him from entering the City of God in temporal life. To explain man's journey from one to the other, he establishes a system of dichotomies that originate from the fall of Adam and are centered on the role of the will in earthly life. At the top, God is the source of the "supreme good", and evil is its opposite (XII, 3). Up to this point he agrees with the ancients, but he diverges again when he identifies good with nature and evil with a defect in nature, an absence of good (XII, 3). In this we have the first division of what “is supremely” between nature and vice, with nature arising… middle of the paper… ty” (XII, 22). This is ultimately what is so scandalously egalitarian about Augustine's Christianity as opposed to the thinking of the ancients. The Supreme Good – eternal life – is accessible to both the simple and the sophisticated. One can contemplate the duality of the universe and understand where each aspect of creation fits into the scheme, or one can avoid the attempt to understand the temporal world in relation to heaven, but as long as one finally accepts faith and, through it, becomes obedient to God by discarding one's own will, the extent to which one has used reason in one's life is irrelevant. Reason, except to the extent that it is necessary in a fundamental sense for man to use it to accept faith and differentiate himself from the beasts, is not necessary for eternal life. What is necessary is the choice to stop exercising one's will, to stop making choices.