 Although the members of the two cities have different ultimate values, they may have intermediate ends in common—for example, they all desire peace on earth. Insofar as any particular state serves such common ends it will have the cooperation of members of the city of God (City of God, XIX.17, p. 945–7). As a Platonist Augustine thought in terms of a hierarchy of levels of reality, in which lower levels imitate or reflect the higher levels. Augustine’s is not a philosophy of “black and white”, of stark opposition between the forces of light and the forces of darkness—this was the Manichean philosophy, to which Augustine at one time subscribed, until the reading of certain works of the Platonists had led him to reject it. According to Augustine there is no absolute evil (see City of God XI.22, XII.2, 3, 7;  Confessions VII.xii.18–xiii.19;  Enchiridion 11–12). Anything evil must be to some extent good, or it could not exist at all. Its evil consists in disorder or misdirection, in its failing to attain all the goodness appropriate to it. 