Hexameron 6.21–6.45

Hence the prophet offered worthy praise to the Lord, saying: “How magnified are your works, O Lord! You have made all things in wisdom.” The divine wisdom penetrates all things, fills all things, and this is gathered more richly from the senses of irrational beings than from the disputation of rational ones; for the testimony of nature is stronger than the argument of teaching. To what animal is it unknown how to guard its safety: if strength is available, by resisting; if speed, by fleeing; if cunning, by taking precautions? Who taught them the practice of healing and to have knowledge of herbs? We are men, and we are often deceived by the appearance of herbs, and often find harmful those we thought healthy. How often has a deadly food crept in among sweet dishes, and a fatal food penetrated the vitals of kings amid the very watches of court servants! Wild beasts know by smell alone how to tell the harmful from the helpful; with no one going ahead, no taster, the herb is plucked and does no harm; for nature is a better teacher of truth. Without anyone's teaching it pours the sweetness of health into our senses; it also teaches that the bitterness of pain is to be avoided. From this life is sweeter, from this death more bitter. It commends her cubs to the lioness and softens the cruel beast with motherly affection. It interrupts the ferocity of the tigress and turns her back when she is about to fall on her prey. For when she has found her lair empty, her offspring stolen, she at once follows the tracks of the robber. But he, though carried on a swift horse, seeing that he can be overtaken by the speed of the beast and that no help for escape is available to him, contrives a trick of this kind. When he sees he is about to be reached, he throws down a glass ball; and then she is deceived by her own image and thinks it is her young. She checks her onrush, wishing to gather up her cub. Again, delayed by the empty appearance, she pours herself out with all her strength to catch the rider, and, swifter with the goad of anger, presses on the fleeing man. Again he slows the pursuer by throwing down a ball, and yet the memory of the fraud does not shut out the mother's diligence. She turns over the empty image and sits down as if to suckle her cub. So, deceived by the zeal of her devotion, she loses both her revenge and her offspring. This Scripture brings before us, which says:

“Children, love your parents; parents, do not provoke your children to anger.” Nature pours this into beasts, that they love their own cubs and cherish their own young. They do not know stepmotherly hatreds, nor are parents turned against their offspring by a changed bed, nor do they know how to prefer the children of a later union and neglect those of the earlier. They know their own young; they do not know differences of love, incitements of hatred, distinctions of offence. The nature of beasts is simple; it does not know the perversion of truth. For the Lord so tempered all things that to those to whom he gave less reason he granted more affection. What wild beast does not offer herself first of all to death for her cubs? What wild beast, though besieged by countless wedges of armed men, does not cover her young with her own body? Though a crop of spears press on, she keeps her little ones, fenced by the wall of her body, safe from danger. What does man say, who neglects the commandment and blots out nature? The son despises his father, the father disinherits his son; and they think this is right, where fruitfulness is condemned. Rather the father condemns himself, who makes void what he begot; and this is thought to be authority, where nature is punished with barrenness.

No one will doubt that the dog lacks reason; yet if you consider the vigour of its sense, you would judge that by the keenness of its perception it takes to itself the force of reason. Indeed, what the few in the world who have worn out the whole length of their life in study have scarcely been able to learn, how to weave together the connections of syllogisms, the dog can easily be judged to grasp by natural training. For when it has found the track of a hare by day and come to a turning of the path and a kind of crossroads, which is split into several parts, going round the beginnings of each path it silently weighs within itself, as if uttering the voice of … by the keenness of gathering the scent: “Either,” it says, “it turned this way, or that way, or certainly betook itself into this bend; but it entered neither this way nor that. It remains, then, that it betook itself this way without doubt.” What men scarcely put together by long meditation on a composed art, this is available to dogs by nature, so that first they detect the falsehood and then, the falsity rejected, find the truth. Do not philosophers spend whole days dividing propositions for themselves in the dust, who draw 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 clings to the one that is left? Who can be so tenacious of a kindness and so mindful of gratitude? For they know how to leap even on robbers for their master, to keep off the night approaches of strangers, and are ready to die for their masters and to die with their masters. Often, too, dogs have given evidence of a murder committed so as to convict the guilty, so that their mute testimony has often been believed.

They say that at Antioch, in a more remote part of the city, a man was killed at dusk who had a dog with him. A certain soldier, out of zeal for plunder, had been the agent of the murder. Hidden by the still dark beginning of the day, he had gone off to other parts; the body lay unburied, a crowd of onlookers stood about, and the dog with tearful lament bewailed its master's misfortune. As it happened, the one who had done the murder, as is the way of human cunning, so as to gain credit for innocence by the confidence of moving about in public, came up to that ring of the onlooking people and, as if pitying, approached the body. Then the dog, setting aside its lament of grief for a moment, took up the weapons of vengeance, seized him and held him, and, murmuring as if a sad song by way of epilogue, turned everyone to tears and gave credit to the proof, because it held him alone of many and did not let go. In the end the man, confused, because he could not empty so manifest an informer of the charge by the objection of any hatred, enmity, envy, or wrong, could not deny the crime any longer. So the dog did what was harder: it carried out vengeance, since it could not offer protection. What worthy return do we make to our creator, whose food we eat? We hide our wrongs and often serve the meals we receive from God to the enemies of God.

What is simpler than little lambs, which we compare to the tiny infancy of little children? Often among them, in a large flock, a little lamb wandering through all the folds strays from its mother, and when it cannot find her, calls the absent one with frequent bleating, so as to rouse the voice of the one who will answer, so that at its sound it may retrace its wandering steps. Though it moves among many thousands of sheep, it recognizes its parent's voice, hastens to its mother, and seeks the springs of its mother's milk known to it. Though it is held by desire of food and drink, it runs past other udders, heavy as they are and overflowing with the moisture of milk; it seeks its mother alone, and signals that the poor juices of its mother's udder alone abound for it. She too, among many thousands of lambs, knows her son alone. The bleating of many is one, the appearance the same; yet she distinguishes her offspring from the rest and recognizes her son alone by the silent testimony of devotion. The shepherd errs in distinguishing the sheep; the little lamb does not know how to err in recognizing its mother. The shepherd is deceived by appearance, but the ewe is not deceived by devotion. The smell is one for all, but nature has its own smell, which the dear offspring seems to breathe by a kind of special property.

Nature has its own practices and domestic senses. Scarcely have the teeth begun to break through in a little infant, and already it knows how to try its weapons. The puppy has no teeth yet, and yet it seeks to avenge itself with its mouth as if it had them. The stag has no horns yet, and yet it practises with its forehead and threatens with the weapons it has not yet tried. If the wolf sees a man first, it takes away his voice and despises him as the victor over his voice taken away; but if it feels it has been seen first, it lays aside its ferocity and cannot run. The lion fears the cock, and especially the white one. The wounded goat seeks dittany and drives the arrows out of the wound. Beasts too know their own remedies. The sick lion seeks a monkey to devour so that it may be healed. The leopard drinks the blood of the wild roe and avoids the force of its weakness. Every sick wild beast is cured by drinking a dog's blood; the sick bear devours ants; the stag chews little olive twigs.

So wild beasts know how to seek what is good for them; do you, O man, not know your remedies? You do not know how to snatch strength from your adversary, so that, like the wolf seen first, he cannot escape you; so that with the eye of your mind you detect his treachery and first hinder the course of his words, blunting his shamelessness and the sharpness of his disputing. But if he forestalls you, he will take away your voice. And if you have been struck dumb, loosen your cloak so that you may loosen your speech; and if the wolf has risen against you, take up a rock, and he flees. Your rock is Christ. If you take refuge in Christ, the wolf flees and cannot frighten you. Peter sought this rock when he wavered on the waves, and found it, because he grasped the right hand of Christ.

What shall I say of the fact that men delight in garlic and take as food what the leopard flees? Indeed, wherever anyone has thought to rub garlic, the leopard leaps away from there and does not stay. The smell which a poisonous wild beast cannot bear, you take for food and pour into your inner organs! But it sometimes heals pains: let it be taken as medicine, not as food; let it be taken by the sick, not by those feasting. You seek medicine and flee fasting, as if you could find some greater remedy. If a serpent tastes the spittle of a fasting man, it dies. You see how great is the power of fasting, that with his spittle a man kills an earthly serpent, and rightly the spiritual one too.

How great a prudence the Lord has poured even into the smallest creatures! The turtledove lays leaves of squill over her nest, lest the wolf attack her chicks; for she knows that wolves are accustomed to flee leaves of this kind. The little fox knows how to cherish its offspring; and do you not know, do you neglect, how to make the offspring of this life safer against the wolves of spiritual wickedness?

But let us return to the order of creation and consider for what reason some have shorter necks, like lions and tigers, and bears too, others longer, like elephants and camels. Is not the reason plain, that those wild beasts which feed on flesh had no need of a long neck? For they do not lower their necks and mouths to the ground for the sake of grazing, but either attack a stag or tear apart an ox or a sheep. But the camel, being taller, how would it feed on the smallest grasses unless it stretched its longer neck down to the ground for the use of grazing? So the camel received a longer neck in proportion to its legs, the horse in proportion, and the ox likewise; for these feed on grass.

The elephant, moreover, has a projecting trunk, because, being taller than all, it cannot bend down to graze. So it uses the trunk's service for gathering food. It pours into the huge beast an abundant draught of moisture, and so it is hollow, so that to quench the thirst of so great a beast it may draw up full lakes, so that with the water gathered it can flood the drinker. The neck, indeed, is shorter than the mass of so great a body demands, lest it too be more of a burden than a use. And so it does not bend its knees, because there was need of stiffer legs, so that the great machine of its limbs could be supported as by columns. It bends the heel slightly; the rest of the feet are stiff from top to bottom. Nor can so great a beast bend itself as we often lie down, and rightly it cannot share the practice of rolling or bending with the other animals. It is propped up on this side and that by very large beams, so that in sleep it may sway a little without danger, because its foot is not divided by any joining of limbs. For tame ones, then, props of this kind are prepared by the skill of those who have this use; but for wild and untamed ones, since no one lays props beneath them by which they can be supported, hence comes the occasion of danger.

For leaning on a tree they either rub their sides or relax in sleep. Sometimes the tree, overcome and bent by so great a body, breaks, and the one who had poured himself onto it falls and cannot raise and lift himself, and lying there dies, or, betrayed by his groaning, is struck down while he lies open to wounds in the belly and the other softer parts nearby; for weapons do not easily penetrate its back and the other outer parts. There are, moreover, those who lay these snares for them for the sake of ivory: they cut through the trees they are accustomed to lean on, on the other side, where they make less use of them, so that the trees cannot sustain the weight of their limbs and bring about their fall.

But if anyone finds fault with these things, let him also find fault with the height of buildings, because they threaten a heavy fall more quickly and are repaired with more difficulty when they have fallen. But if we often raise those either for beauty or for a lookout, we ought to approve these qualities in elephants too, because they render great service in warfare. Hence the Persian army, fierce in wars, strong with arrows and every throwing of weapons, because weapons are hurled downward with greater force from above. Their battle line advances fenced as with walking towers. In the middle of the plains they fight as from a wall, and, placed as in a citadel and lookout, they watch wars rather than undergo them, and so, removed from danger, they seem safe through the bulk of the beasts. For who would dare approach them, when from above he is easily pierced by javelins and below crushed by the charge of elephants? In short, battle lines give way to them, and wedges of armed men, and those square camps of the standards. For they rush on the enemy with an unbearable onset, so that they are checked by no column of warriors, no packing of soldiers, no barrier of shields; they move in battles like moving mountains, and like hills stand out with lofty top, and with the crash of their trumpeting disturb the confidence of all. What can a foot soldier do against them, though strong in arm and ready of hand, when a wall surrounded by peoples of armed men comes against him with walking motion? What can a horseman do, when his horse, terrified by the hugeness of so great a beast, flees? What can an archer do, when the iron-clad bodies of the men above cannot feel the blow of a javelin, and the beast, even unarmoured, is not easily pierced by iron, and, protected by breastplates, cuts through opposing lines without danger to itself and crushes the squadrons?

So, like huge buildings, elephants are supported on stronger foundations; otherwise, propped on unequal feet, they would collapse within a short life. But now they prolong their life to three hundred years, because all their limbs suit their size. And so their joints are not separate, as ours are, but compacted, so that they may be stronger. How quickly men's knees and soles are troubled if they have stood long, or run too fast, or walked continuously! For what is joined and jointed admits the feeling of pain or the cause of injury more easily than what is solid and compact.

And why do you wonder if they are feared when clothed in armour, since they are always armed with their tusks as with natural spears? With the trunk they break whatever they have wrapped round; with the foot they kill whatever they have pressed down, as by the fall of a huge ruin. They wrap their trunks round trees for their food, and like very tall serpents they lash what they have caught with snaky coils. Often they gather them into a circle, especially when food is picked from the ground or drink is drawn. So they are a proof to us that nothing has been created superfluous. And yet this beast of so great a bulk is subject to us and serves human commands.

For since we are about to speak of the creation of man, we ought to prepare and give a foretaste of his praise. Nothing seemed to have a stronger nature than the elephant, nothing so terrible or tall; nothing so wild as lions or tigers are. And these serve man and lay aside their nature through human training. They forget what they were born; they put on what they are commanded. Why say more? They are taught like children, they serve like the weak, they are beaten like the timid, they are corrected like subjects; they pass into our ways, since they have lost their own impulses.

Nature, then, is wonderful in the greatest things (for the Lord is wonderful on high), wonderful also in the smallest. For as we marvel no less at the levels of the plains than at the heights of the mountains, and are not more amazed at the height of the cedar than at the fruitfulness of the short vine or olive, so I do not marvel more at the elephant, because it is tall, than at the mouse, because it is terrible to the elephant. For this is the power of nature, that some things are terrible to some and fearful to others. For a kind of prerogative has been given to each creature, so that they are supported by certain privileges of their own. The elephant, formidable to bulls, fears the mouse. The lion, indeed, king of beasts, is driven wild by the tiny sting of a scorpion and killed by the poison of a serpent. The lion's beauty is remarkable: it shakes the muscles on its maned neck or lifts its face with raised chest; but who would not marvel that death comes out of huge bodies from so short a sting of a scorpion, that you would think it incorporeal?

Nor let anyone find fault with this, that the creator mixed among his creatures serpents and other poisonous kinds of animals or plants. For these were born for our correction, not for our deformation. For things that are often an offence and a terror to the lazy, the weak, or the wicked, are for others a use, as tutors are to children. They seem bitter, harsh, and troublesome, formidable with the rod; they deny the freedom of wantonness, demand the necessity of discipline, constrain childish minds by fear lest they slip away into luxury; and so by their severity the children turn out frugal, sober, continent, given more to praise than to play. You see what those fearsome rods accomplish? So too serpents are rods for those whose age of soul is weak and whose virtue of mind is childish; but they cannot harm the stronger. Indeed, to the one who trusts in the Lord it is said: “You shall walk upon the asp and the basilisk, and you shall trample the lion and the dragon.” A viper bit Paul, and they thought that he, as a sinner barely saved from shipwreck, would die of the poison; but after he remained unharmed, the viper shaken off into the fire, he found more veneration among the onlookers. And the Lord himself says to all: “He who believes and is baptized shall be saved; but he who does not believe shall be condemned.” And he said these would be the signs of believers, that they would stroke serpents with their hands, and that poisons and every deadly thing could not harm them even if they drank them. So your own unbelief, O man, is more to be feared by you than the poisons of serpents. Fear them, then, so that at least while they are feared they may call you to faith. But if you do not fear God, at least fear the poisons that avenge unbelief.

Now, since you see elephants subject to you and lions subjected, know yourself, O man, a saying which belongs not, as they say, to Pythian Apollo, but to holy Solomon, who says: “Unless you know yourself, O fairest among women”; though long before Moses wrote in Deuteronomy: “Attend to yourself.” “Man, attend to yourself,” says the law; and the prophet says: “Unless you know yourself.” To whom does he say this? “O fairest,” he says, “among women.” Who is fair among women but the soul, which possesses excellence of beauty in either sex? And rightly it is comely, since it desires not earthly but heavenly things, not corruptible but incorrupt, in which beauty does not usually perish; for all bodily things wither with the advance of age or the unevenness of sickness. “Attend to this,” says Moses, in which you are whole, in which the better portion of you is. Indeed the Lord has interpreted who you are, saying: “Beware of false prophets”; for these weaken the soul and undermine the mind. You, then, are not flesh. For what is flesh without the helm of the soul, the vigour of the mind? Flesh is taken up today, laid aside tomorrow. Flesh is temporal, the soul lasting. Flesh is the garment of the soul, which clothes itself with a kind of garment of the body. You, then, are not the garment, but the one who uses the garment. So it is said … that, stripping off the old man with his deeds, you should put on the new, which is renewed not in the quality of the body but in the spirit … and in knowledge. You are not, I say, flesh; for it is not said to flesh: “For the temple of God is holy, which you are,” and elsewhere: “You are the temple of God, and the Holy Spirit of God dwells in you”; but it is said to the renewed and faithful, in whom the Spirit of God remains. But in the carnal he does not remain, because it is written: “My Spirit shall not remain in these men, because they are flesh.”

But let us consider the … of our very creation. “Let us make man,” he says, “after our image and likeness.” Who says this? Is it not God, who made you? What is God? Flesh or spirit? Certainly not flesh, but spirit, to whom flesh cannot be like, because he is incorporeal and invisible, while flesh is both grasped and seen. To whom does he say it? Certainly not to himself, because he does not say “I will make” but “Let us make”; not to the angels, because they are ministers, and servants cannot have a share of the operation with the master, nor works with the author; but he says it to the Son, even if the Jews do not want it, even if the Arians fight against it. But let both the Jews be silent and the Arians with their parents …, who, while they exclude One from the partnership of the divine operation, bring in many, and give to slaves the prerogative they deny to the Son.

But suppose God seemed to you to have needed the help of servants for working: if the operation is common to God with the angels, is the image common to God and the angels? Would he say to angels, “Let us make man after our image and likeness”? But hear who the image of God is, from him who says: “who rescued us,” he says, “from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his glory, in whom we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins, who is the image of the invisible God and the firstborn of all creation.” He is the image of the Father, who always is and was in the beginning. Indeed, he is the image who says: “Philip, he who sees me sees the Father also. And how do you, when you see the living image of the living Father, say: Show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?” The image of God is power, not weakness; the image of God is wisdom, the image of God is justice. But wisdom is divine and justice is everlasting. He alone is the image of God who said, “I and the Father are one,” so having the likeness of the Father as to have the unity of divinity and fullness. Where he says “Let us make,” how is there inequality? When again he says “after our likeness,” where is unlikeness? So too in the Gospel, where he says “I and the Father,” there is certainly not one person; but where he says “are one,” there is no difference of divinity or of work. So in both there is not one person but one substance. And he rightly added “are,” because to be always is divine, so that you may believe co-eternal the one whom you deny to be like. For he is eternal of whom Moses says: “He who is has sent me.” Fittingly too he put first “I.” For if he had put the Father first, you would judge the Son lesser; but he put first the Son, whom it is not right to believe superior to the Father, and added the Father, so that you may notice that God the Father and his Son are not bound by a prejudgment of order.

“Attend,” he says, “to yourself alone.” For we ourselves are one thing, what is ours another, and what is around us another. We are the soul and the mind; ours are the limbs of the body and its senses; around us are money, slaves, and the furnishings of this life. Attend, then, to yourself, know yourself, that is, not what arms you have, not how great a strength of body, not how many possessions, how much power, but what kind of soul and mind, from which all counsels proceed, to which the fruit of your works is referred. For it is full of wisdom, full of piety and justice, since all virtue is from God. To it God says: “Behold, Jerusalem, I have painted your walls.” That soul is painted by God which has in itself the shining grace of virtues and the splendour of piety. That soul is well painted in which the likeness of the divine operation shines out; that soul is well painted in which is the brightness of glory and the image of the Father's substance. According to this image, which shines out, the painting is precious. According to this image was Adam before sin; but when he fell, he laid aside the image of the heavenly and took on the likeness of the earthly. But let us flee this image, which cannot enter the city of God, because it is written: “Lord, in your city you will bring their image to nothing.” And the unworthy image does not enter, and what has entered is shut out, because “there shall not enter into it,” he says, “anything common, or he who makes abomination and a lie,” but he shall enter it on whose forehead is the name of the Lamb.

Our soul, then, is after the image of God. In this you are whole, O man, because without it you are nothing, but are earth and will be dissolved into earth. Indeed, so that you may know that without the soul the flesh is nothing, he says: “Do not fear those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” Why then do you put confidence in the flesh, you who lose nothing if you lose the flesh? But fear this, lest you be cheated of the help of your soul. For what will a man give in exchange for his soul, in which is not a slight portion of himself but the substance of the whole of humanity? It is this by which you rule over the other animals, wild beasts and birds; this is after the image of God, while the body is after the appearance of beasts. In the one is the holy mark of divine imitation; in the other a cheap partnership with wild beasts and monsters.

But let us discuss more finely what “after the image of God” is. Is the flesh after the image of God? Then there is earth in God, because flesh is earth; then God is bodily, then weak like flesh and subject to passions? And perhaps the head seems to you to be after the likeness of God, because it stands out, or the eyes, because they look, or the ears, because they hear. If you look at height, do we seem tall to buildings because we stand out a little with our heads from the earth? But are we not ashamed to be called like God on that account, because we are taller than serpents and other creeping things, or than young deer and sheep or wolves? And how much taller than we are camels and elephants in that respect! Sight, indeed, is an excellent thing, to look at the elements of the world, to know what no one announces but your own gaze detects; but how much is it that we see, that because of it we should say we are after the likeness of God, who sees all things, observes all things, detects hidden feelings, searches the secrets of the heart? Are we not ashamed to say this, when I cannot see the whole of myself? I see what is before my feet; I cannot see what is behind. I do not know my neck, I do not know the back of my head, I cannot see my loins. Likewise, how much is it that we hear, when I cannot see and hear what is a little distant? If walls are in between, sight is hindered, hearing is hindered. Then our body clings to one place, is enclosed in a narrow space; all wild beasts are broader than man, all also swifter.

The flesh, then, cannot be after the image of God, but our soul is, which is free and wanders this way and that with outspread thoughts and counsels, which by considering looks at all things. See, now we are in Italy and we think of what seems to belong to the eastern or western parts, and we seem to be with those who are settled in Persia, and we see those who live in Africa, if that land has received any known to us; we follow those who set out, we cling to their charms, we are joined to the absent, we speak to the separated, we even raise the dead to conversation, and embrace and hold them as living and pay them the duties and practice of life. That, then, is after the image of God which is judged not by bodily vigour but by the vigour of the mind, which sees the absent, travels by sight over the seas, runs through with its gaze, searches hidden things, carries its senses this way and that in one moment through the bounds of the whole world and the secrets of the universe; which is joined to God, clings to Christ, descends into the underworld and ascends, moves freely in heaven. Indeed, hear one who says: “But our citizenship is in heaven.” Is not that, then, after the image of God, in which God always is? But hear that it is after the image of God. For the apostle says: “So we all, with unveiled face beholding the glory of God, are re-formed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.”