And the complaint is just, but order must be kept, the order which He wove together so that it should be gathered up; and also because we cannot more fully know ourselves unless we have first come to know what is the nature of all living creatures. Let the earth, He says, bring forth the living soul according to its kind, four-footed things and creeping things and beasts of the earth, and cattle according to their kind, and all creeping things according to their kind. And God made the beasts of the earth and all the cattle according to their kind and all the creeping things of the earth according to their kind. And God saw that they were good, and God said: Let us make man. In this place I am not unaware that some have referred the kinds of beasts and of cattle and of creeping things of the earth to this, that they might refer these to the enormities of crimes, the folly of sins, the wickedness of thoughts:
But I for my part take the simple natures of each kind. Nor do I fear that anyone should think me to be compared to the presumption of a poor host, who in his zeal for kindness invites many, yet sets before them nothing but cheap and common foods, so that by the scanty furnishing of the poor man's table he incurs more reproach from the disdain of the guests than he earns thanks from the addition of hospitality; for not even the friends rejected Elisha as a bad host when he set before them rustic herbs.
Like to vain accounts is that choice and carefully sumptuous banquet, in which the appearance of a pheasant or a turtledove is set out, and within a chicken is eaten; or a young bird is brought in and is stuffed with oysters or with mussels; or a cup is drunk which, by its varied color and odor, is changed into alien flavors — things of the sea joined to things of the land, things of the land to things of the sea alike. This is to reproach the Creator's design, who granted us all things for nourishment, in that He did not mix those things together. But these things seem sweet at first and afterward become bitter; for the more abundant the luxury has been, so much the more pernicious is the intemperance. Elisha, however, set out bitter things, but afterward they were made sweet.
In short, those who before supposed death to be in that food afterward obtained in it the grace of sweetness and of life. Nor again is there cause for fear, lest I should seem to have invited more than I can feed, and the loaves of my words should fail you; for Elisha also — though in merit inimitable, yet to be imitated by us in faith — did not consider how many loaves he had, but willed to divide among all those which he had, and judged them sufficient for all. And so he commanded his servant to divide ten barley loaves among the people. And the servant said: What shall I set this before a hundred men? And he answered: Give, and let them eat, for thus says the Lord: They shall eat and shall leave over. Your faith, therefore, will make the banquet of the poor man's tongue to abound.
Nor do I fear lest the fasts make you more voracious, so that you should return filled yet hungering and empty, because it is written: The Lord confirms the righteous, and in the days of famine they shall be satisfied. It is far more beautiful not to blush at barley loaves and to set out what you have than to refuse. Elisha, who kept nothing for himself, had abundance for the peoples. Elisha therefore did not blush to set out barley loaves: we blush to understand simple things plainly, things which are declared by their simple and proper names. We read 'heaven' — let us accept heaven; we read 'earth' — let us understand fruitful earth. Why should I seek out what is the measure of its circuit, which the geometers have reckoned at a hundred and eighty thousand stadia?
I gladly confess that I do not know what I do not know — nay rather, that I do know what it will profit nothing to know. It is better to know the kinds of lands than their extents, which — surrounded by the sea, with barbarous regions lying between, soaked and rendered impassable by marshy soil — how can we comprehend? That this is impossible for men, the Scripture shows, since God says: Who has measured the water with his hand, and the heaven with his palm, and the whole earth in his closed fist? Who has set the mountains in a balance and the rocks in a scale and the groves in a yoke? And below: He who holds the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants like locusts, who has set the heaven as a vault.
Who therefore dares to claim for himself a knowledge equal to God's, so that what God has marked out by the very oracle of His majesty to be His own, a man should presume to be within his reach for knowing? Surely Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, but because he received the Spirit of God, as a minister of God he set that empty and usurped teaching of philosophy after the reasoning of the truth, and described for me those things which he judged suited to our hope: that God made the earth, that the earth brought forth, according to the command of God the Almighty and the operation of the Lord Jesus, shrubs from the lands and every living soul according to its kind.
But he did not think it ought to be said how much of the space of the air the shadow of the earth occupies when the sun recedes from us and draws away the day, lighting the lower parts of the axis; nor in what way the globe of the moon, falling into this region of the world, causes an eclipse — since he passed over things which, being nothing to us, would profit us as good as nothing. For he saw in the Holy Spirit that those vanities of a now-withering wisdom are not to be pursued, which occupy our mind with inexplicable matters and mock our effort, but rather that those things are to be described which would look toward the advancement of virtue. Let us therefore cleave to the prophetic sayings, and let us not hold the discourses of the Holy Spirit as cheap and worthy of contempt. Let the earth, He says, bring forth the living soul of cattle and of beasts and of creeping things.
Why do we argue other things, where the nature of earthly creatures is evidently formed? For the Word of God runs in the depths of the world through every creature, so that suddenly out of the hollow all the kinds of living things which God appointed are brought forth, and by a law prescribed for the future they all succeed one another according to their kind and likeness, so that a lion begets a lion, a tiger a tiger, an ox an ox, a swan a swan, an eagle an eagle. Once commanded, it grew ingrained in nature forever, and therefore the earth does not cease to render the obedience of its service, so that, the species being restored by the ordinance of antiquity, new ages may be renewed by succession. But do you wish to direct to the use of man the things which have been begotten?
Do not deny to each kind the truth proper to its own nature, and you will far rather fit them to human grace — first, because nature has prostrated all the kinds of cattle, beasts and fish, so that some crawl upon the belly, others which are supported on feet you may see to be sunk down rather by the four-footed gait of the body and as though fixed to the earth than free; since, having no faculty of raising themselves up, they seek their food from the earth and follow only the pleasures of the belly, toward which they are bent down. Beware, O man, of being bowed down after the manner of cattle; beware lest you bend yourself toward the belly not so much by body as by desire. Look upon the form of your body and take up the appearance befitting your lofty vigor; let only the animals graze prone.
Why do you make yourself rich in eating, you whom nature has not prostrated? Why do you take delight in that in which there is an injury to nature? Why, night and day intent upon food, do you feed on earthly things after the manner of cattle? Why, given over to bodily allurements, do you dishonor your very self, while you are a slave to the belly and to its passions? Why do you take away from yourself the understanding which the Creator bestowed upon you? Why do you liken yourself to the beasts of burden, from which God willed to set you apart, saying: Be not made like the horse and the mule, in which there is no understanding? Or if the voracity of the horse delights you in your intemperance, and to neigh after females is your pleasure, may it delight you to have your jaws shaped and constrained with the bridle.
If cruelty feeds you — this is the madness of wild beasts, which are slaughtered because of their savagery — see lest the monstrousness of your own cruelty turn also upon you. The sluggish ass, exposed to plunder and duller in sense, what else does it teach but that we ought to be more lively, and not grow sluggish through laziness of body and mind, but flee to faith, which is wont to lighten heavy burdens? The fraudulent fox, plunging itself into pits and lurking-places, is it not a sign that it is an unprofitable animal and worthy of hatred for its rapine, contemptible for its weakness, and therefore heedless of its own safety while it lies in wait for what belongs to others?
He formed the partridge, which plunders the eggs of another — that is, of another partridge — and warms them with its own body, but cannot have the fruit of its fraud; because, when it has hatched out its young, it loses them: for when they have heard the voice of the one that laid the eggs, leaving the other they betake themselves to her by a certain natural office and love, recognizing her as their true mother by the bearing of the eggs, signifying that this one fulfills the office of a nurse, that one of a parent. And so it pours out its own labors in vain and is mulcted of the price of its fraud. Whence Jeremiah also says:
The partridge cried out and gathered together what it did not bring forth — that is, it gathered the eggs and cried out as though exulting in the effect of its fraud, but it wastes its effort, because with great labor expended it rears for another those young which, by the warming of its long-continued diligence, we should think its own. An imitator of this is the devil, who strives to snatch away the generations of the eternal Creator; and if he has been able to gather any who are foolish and lacking the vigor of their own sense, cherishing them with bodily allurements — as soon as the voice of Christ has been poured into the little ones, they depart and betake themselves to that mother who embraces her young like a bird with maternal love. For the devil gathered the Gentiles, whom he had not created;
but as soon as they came to know the voice which He sent forth in His Gospel, they betook themselves preeminently to Him who received them under the shadow of His wings and gave them to the Church their mother to be nurtured. The lion, proud in the ferocity of its nature, knows not how to mingle itself with the kinds of other wild beasts, but, like a certain king, disdains the fellowship of the many. It even scorns yesterday's food, and turns away even from the very remains of its own meal. And what wild beast would dare to associate itself with it, in whose voice there is naturally so great a terror that many of the living creatures which by their swiftness could escape its onset, at the sound of its roaring, as though struck by a certain force, we believe fail and grow faint?
For neither did the Scripture keep silent about the appearance of the leopard, that by the variety of its color it betrays the varied movements of its soul. For Jeremiah says: If the Ethiopian shall change his skin, and the leopard his spots. For this is taken not only of its figure, but also of the mobility of its fury, in that, by the dark and restless and shifting changes of a faithless mind and spirit, like the wind, the people of the Jews can no longer keep the grace of a good purpose, nor return to any amendment and correction, having once put on the wild beast's monstrousness.
Yet there is also in the nature of quadrupeds something to which the prophetic discourse exhorts us to imitate, that by its example we may beware of sloth and may not be turned back from the pursuit of virtue by the smallness or weakness of our body, nor recalled from the greatness of that purpose. For tiny is the ant, which dares things greater than its own strength, and is not compelled to its work by servitude, but by a purpose of spontaneous foresight it builds up beforehand for itself the future supplies of food. That you may imitate its industry, the Scripture admonishes you, saying: Betake yourself to the ant, O sluggard, and imitate its ways and be wiser than it. For it possesses no tillage:
having neither one to compel it nor acting under a master, how does it prepare its food, which lays up for itself a harvest from your labors! And while you for the most part are in want, it lacks nothing. No granaries are closed to it, no impenetrable strongholds, no inviolable heaps. The guardian watches and dares not forbid the thefts; the owner beholds his own losses and does not avenge them. The plunder is carried along in a black column through the fields, the paths swarm with the company of travelers, and the great grains which cannot be grasped with their narrow mouths are pushed along upon their shoulders. The lord of the harvest beholds these things and blushes to refuse such scanty gains to a dutiful industry.
But what shall I say of dogs, in whom it is implanted by a certain nature to render thanks and to maintain anxious watches for the safety of their masters? Whence to those unmindful of a benefit, and slothful and lazy, the Scripture cries out: Dumb dogs, not knowing how to bark. They are dogs, then, who know how to bark for their masters, who know how to defend their own dwellings. Whence do you also learn to exercise your voice for Christ, when grievous wolves assail the sheepfold of Christ; learn to keep the word in your mouth, lest, like a dumb dog, you should seem to have deserted by a certain silence of prevarication the guardianship of the faith committed to you.
Such a dog was a traveler and companion of the angel, whom Raphael in the prophetic book thought not idly to be joined to himself and to Tobias the son, when he set out, in order that he might put Asmodeus to flight and confirm the marriage-bond; for through the dutiful service the demon is driven out, the marriage is established. And so under the appearance of a dumb beast the holy angel Raphael trained the disposition of the youth Tobias, whom he had received to protect, toward the rendering of gratitude. For who would not blush not to render thanks to those who deserve well of him, when he sees even the beasts shun the crime of ingratitude? Even those keep the memory of the nourishment imparted to them; and do you not keep the memory of the safety you have received?
The she-bear, though she lies in wait — for she is a beast full of fraud, as the Scripture says — yet is reported to bring forth shapeless offspring from the womb, but to shape the young with her tongue and to form them into her own appearance and likeness. Do you not marvel, in a wild beast, at such offices of a loving mouth, whose tenderness expresses nature? The she-bear, then, fashions her offspring to her own likeness; can you not instruct your sons to be like yourself? And what of this, that she did not pass over the industry of healing either? Since, when grievously afflicted by slaughter and wounded all over, she knows how to heal herself with an herb whose name is 'phlomos,' as the Greeks call it, placing it upon her ulcers, so that they are cured by the mere touch. The serpent too, by feeding on fennel, drives off the blindness it has contracted.
And so, when it has perceived its eyes being clouded over, it seeks the remedies it knows and is not cheated of the effect. The tortoise, having fed its inward parts on the serpent, when it has noticed the poison creeping over it, employs marjoram as the medicine of its own safety; and although it is plunged in the muddy marsh-pools, it knows nevertheless how to cure itself with its own antidote, and by a sure aid of health it proves that it too knows the powers of herbs. You may also see the fox healing itself with the little tear of the pine, and by such a remedy putting off the span of impending death. The Lord Himself cries out in the book of Jeremiah: The turtledove and the swallow, the sparrows of the field, have kept the times of their coming in; but my people has not known the judgments of the Lord.
The swallow knows when it should come, and when also it should return; the pious bird knows even to announce, by the testimony of its arrival, the sign of spring. The ant too knows how to scout out the times of fair weather; for when it has noticed its fruits, wetted by rain, growing damp, having more diligently scouted out the air for when it can keep a steady mildness, it unbars its heaps and carries them out of its caverns upon its own shoulders, so that its own grains may be dried by the steady sun. In short, by no means on all those days are the locks of its hair, when by the blasts it has recalled its store to a more precious and unspeakable hollow. The oxen, when rain is impending, know to keep themselves at their stalls.
The same oxen, when by their natural sense they have gathered a change of the sky, look outward and stretch their necks beyond their stalls, all with one appearance, as if to testify that they wish to go forth. The sheep, at the coming of winter, insatiably snatches the herbage as food without being satisfied, because it has a presentiment that, through the harshness of winter, it will be lacking; so that it may stuff itself beforehand with the fodder of the grass before all the herbage fails through the searing frost. That earthly hedgehog, which is commonly called the urchin, if it has had any presentiment of snares, shuts itself up in its spines and gathers itself into its own armor, so that whoever has thought to touch it may be wounded.
And the same hedgehog, foreseeing the future, fortifies for itself two passages for breathing, so that when it has come to know that the north wind is about to blow, it may block up the northern one, and when it has come to know that the clouds of the air are being wiped away by the south wind, it may betake itself to the northern one, so that it may avoid the blasts that meet it head-on and would harm it from that quarter. Whence the prophet rendered worthy praise to the Lord, saying: How magnified are your works, O Lord! In wisdom you have made all things. The divine wisdom penetrates all things, fills all things; and this is more richly gathered from the senses of irrational creatures than from the disputation of rational ones; for the testimony of nature is stronger than the argument of doctrine.
To what living creature is it unknown how to preserve its own safety—if it has strength, by resisting; if it has speed, by fleeing; if it has cunning, by taking precaution? Who taught these creatures the practice of healing and the knowledge of herbs? We are human beings, and we are often deceived by the appearance of herbs, and frequently we find that those we think wholesome are harmful. How often has deadly food crept in amid sweet banquets, and amid the very watches of courtiers a fatal morsel has reached the vitals of kings through their attendants! Wild beasts know by smell alone how to distinguish the harmful from the beneficial; with no one going before, with no one tasting first, the herb is plucked and does no harm—for nature is a better teacher of truth.
This nature, without any instructor, instills into our senses the knowing pleasantness of health, and likewise teaches that the bitterness of pain is to be shunned. Hence life is sweeter, hence death more bitter. This nature commends to the lioness her own cubs, and softens the savage beast with a mother's affection. This nature checks the ferocity of the tigress and turns her back when she is bent upon her prey. For when she finds the lair of her stolen offspring empty, she at once presses upon the tracks of the ravisher. But he, though carried on a swift horse, yet seeing that he can be overtaken by the beast's speed and that no means of escape avails him, contrives a stratagem by this trick: when he sees himself about to be caught, he throws down a sphere of glass; and then she is deceived by her own image and thinks it her young.
She checks her onrush, longing to gather up her young. Again, held back by the empty appearance, she flings herself with all her strength to seize the rider, and, swifter through the goad of anger, presses upon the fugitive. Once more he, by casting down a sphere, slows his pursuer; yet the memory of the deception does not banish the mother's zeal. She turns over the empty image and, as though about to suckle her young, settles down upon it. Thus, deceived by the devotion of her own love, she loses both her vengeance and her offspring. This is what Scripture brings before us, which says: 'Children, love your fathers; parents, do not provoke your children to anger.' Nature has instilled this into the beasts, that they love their own cubs and cherish their young.
They know nothing of a stepmother's hatreds, nor, when the mating is changed, are the parents corrupted against their offspring, nor do they know how to prefer the children of a later union while neglecting those of an earlier one. They recognize their own pledges of love; they know nothing of distinctions in affection, of the incitements of hatred, of the dividing-lines of offence. The wild beasts have their own nature; it knows nothing of the calumnies of truth. For thus the Lord has so tempered all things, that to those to whom He gave less of reason He granted the more of affection. What wild beast does not, for its own cubs, offer its very self to death above all? What wild beast, though hemmed in by countless wedges of armed men, does not shelter its young in its own body? Though a harvest of weapons should press upon it, it keeps its little ones, fenced about by the wall of its body, free from danger.
What does man say, who neglects the commandment and blots out nature? The son despises his father, the father disowns his son—and they think this to be a right, where fruitfulness is condemned. Rather the father condemns himself, who makes void what he has begotten; and this is thought to belong to authority, where nature is punished with sterility. No one would doubt that the dog is a creature devoid of reason; yet if you consider the vigor of its perception, you would judge that by its keenness of sense it lays claim to a force of reasoning. In short, what a few men, set in their orbit, who have worn away the whole long span of their life in study, have scarcely been able to learn—namely, how to weave together the connections of syllogisms—this it may easily be reckoned that a dog can grasp through its natural training.
For when by day it has found the track of a hare and comes to a fork in the path, and a certain crossing of ways which splits into very many parts, going round the beginnings of the several paths, it ponders silently within itself, as it were sending forth by day a voice through the keenness of gathering the scent: 'Either,' it says, 'it has turned aside in this direction or in that, or surely it has betaken itself into this bend; but it has entered neither this road nor that. It remains, then, that it has betaken itself without doubt into this part.' What men scarcely put together by a long meditation of composed art, this is available to dogs from nature—namely, that they first detect the falsehood and then, the falsity rejected, find the truth.
Do not philosophers wear away whole days dividing their propositions in the dust, drawing each one with a rod, and out of three—when one of them must be true—first kill off two as agreeing with falsehood, and so determine that the force of truth cleaves to the one that is left? Who can be so tenacious of a benefit and so mindful of a kindness? Since for their master's sake dogs even know how to leap upon robbers, and to bar the nocturnal approaches of strangers, and they are ready to die for their masters and to die together with their masters. Often, too, by the clear evidence of a murder committed, dogs have brought forth proofs to convict the guilty, so that in most cases credit has been given to their mute testimony.
At Antioch, they relate, a man was slain at twilight in a more remote part of the city, who had a dog attached to him. A certain soldier, out of desire for plunder, had become the agent of the murder. Covered by the darkness, while the day was still in its shadowy beginning, he had withdrawn to other parts; the corpse lay unburied, a numerous crowd of onlookers stood by, the dog with tearful lament bewailed its master's calamity. By chance the one who had inflicted the death, as the cunning of human wit goes—so that by the assumed authority of moving in the midst he might win credit for innocence—approached that ring of the people who were looking on, and as though pitying drew near to the funeral.
Then the dog, laying aside for a little while its lament of grief, took up the weapons of vengeance, and seizing him held him fast, and as though murmuring a piteous song by way of some epilogue, turned all the bystanders to tears: it brought forth proof of its faith, holding fast the one man out of many and not letting go. At length that man, perturbed, since he could not by any objection of hatred or enmity or envy or any wrong clear himself of so manifest an accuser of the deed, was no longer able to refute the charge. And so—what was harder—he pursued his own punishment, because he could not furnish a defense. What do we, who feed upon His food, render worthy of our Creator? We even dissemble injuries, and often we set before the enemies of God those banquets which we receive from God!
What is simpler than little lambs, which we compare to the tender infancy of small children? Often one of these little lambs in a great flock wanders straying from its mother through all the sheepfolds, and, when it cannot find her, calls the absent one with frequent bleating, that it may rouse the voice of her who will answer, so that toward her sound it may retrace its wandering steps. Though it move among many thousands of sheep, it recognizes the voice of its parent, hastens to its mother, and seeks out also the familiar founts of its mother's milk. Although held by desire for food and drink, it nevertheless runs past the swollen udders of others, though they overflow with the moisture of milk; it seeks its mother alone, and signifies that only the meager juices of its own mother's udder abound for it. She too, among many thousands of little lambs, knows her son alone.
There is one bleating of very many, the same appearance: yet she distinguishes her offspring from the rest and recognizes her son alone by the silent testimony of affection. The shepherd errs in telling apart the sheep, but the little lamb cannot err in recognizing its mother. The shepherd is deceived by appearance, but the sheep is not deceived in affection. There is one smell to all, yet nature has its own scent, which the dear offspring seems to give off by a certain special property. Nature has its own usages and its household senses. The teeth have scarcely begun to break forth in the little infant, and already it knows how to try its own weapons. The puppy has no teeth yet, and as though it had them, it seeks to avenge itself with its mouth. The stag has no horns yet, and nevertheless plays at butting with its forehead, and from that part it threatens weapons which it has not yet experienced.
If the wolf sees a man first, it snatches away his voice and despises him as a victor over a voice taken away; likewise, if it perceives that it has been seen first, it lays aside its ferocity and cannot run. The lion fears the cock, and especially a white one. The wounded she-goat seeks out dittany and by it expels the arrows from its wound. The beasts too know their own remedies. The sick lion seeks an ape, that by devouring it it may be healed. The roe-deer in distress drinks the blood of the wild goat and so wards off the violence of its languor. Every sick wild beast is cured by drinking a dog's blood; the sick bear devours ants, the stag chews little branches of the olive. 'Therefore the wild beasts know how to seek out the things that profit them: but you, O man, are ignorant of your remedies.'
You do not know how to snatch away the strength of your adversary, so that, like the wolf forestalled, he cannot escape you; so that with the eye of your mind you may detect his treachery and first impede the course of his words, and blunt his shamelessness and the sharpness of his argument. But if he forestalls you, he will take away your voice. And if you are struck dumb, loose your garment, that you may loose your speech; and if the wolf rises up against you, take a stone, and he flees. Your stone is Christ. If you flee to Christ, the wolf flees and will not be able to frighten you. This stone Peter sought, when he was tottering amid the waves, and he found it, because he embraced the right hand of Christ. What shall I say of men's delighting in another creature and taking for food that which the leopard flees?