Being, remember, is goodness. Insofar as something is , then, it is good. All things are a reflection of God's goodness. Augustine argues that he could not have fabricated that idea of perfection nor could it have come from an observation of finite and perishable things. Therefore, an idea of Absolute Goodness and perfection could only have come from God.
Evil is the absence of good.
This is Augustine's way of saying living in the absence of God or Love. A thing's degree of being is an index to its degree of goodness. Clearly, the things of higher value should be loved more and the things of less value loved less. If our loves were rightly ordered, they would match the order of value in things themselves. In other words, there is an appropriate ordering of loves that matches perfectly the ordering of goodness in things.