Question Two of Chapter Eight of the Second Decade
On morning and evening cognition in angels
It is asked what morning and evening cognition are in angels.
To this Augustine answers as follows in Book III Upon Genesis, Book XI of The City of God, and To Orosius.
Evening cognition in angels is the cognition of created things in their proper genus and in their proper natures, through species and likenesses impressed upon and innate in the angels themselves.
And such cognition of created things in their proper natures and proper being is therefore called evening and a posteriori cognition in angels, because every creature, when compared with God, who is light through his essence, is as a certain evening and darkness.
Morning cognition, however, is the cognition of created things by angels in the Word—that is, in the divine essence—when they cognize them through the reasons of things, or through the Ideas which are in the Word as in a mirror a priori and as in the principle of their emanation.
And because the cognition of things in the Word is more perfect than cognition in their proper nature, the first cognition of angels is therefore called morning cognition, and the second evening cognition.
For example, according to Augustine—because he expounds the works of the six days not insofar as they convey successions of times, but insofar as they express the cognition of an angel, the cause having been related to the six kinds of things created in order—the angels, insofar as they knew the light which had been produced and divided from the darkness in its proper genus, that is, by intuitively beholding the created light in itself and in its own being, are said to have evening cognition.
But insofar as the angels cognized the same light in the Word and in the divine essence, their cognition is said to be morning cognition; and this, according to Augustine, is called one day.
Then, insofar as they cognized the firmament and the divisions of the waters from one another intuitively in their proper genus, it is called evening cognition.
But insofar as they cognized the firmament and the divisions of the waters from one another in the Word, their cognition is said to be morning cognition; and this, according to Augustine, is called the second day. And so successively concerning each of the works of the six days.
These things are from the theologians.