Augustine’s personal history and his involvement with the Manichees, with their dualist belief in the eternal struggle between equally balanced forces of good and evil.51 Such critics said that this was the origin of both Augustine’s pessimistic view of human nature and his emphasis on the role of sexual reproduction in transmitting the Fall. It would probably do more justice to Augustine to say that he was heir to the world-denying impulses of Platonists and Stoics.
