Against Celsus 4.74

Next he accuses us at length of saying that God made all things for man. And he wishes to show from natural history about animals, and from the sagacity that appears in them, that all things came into being no more for human beings than for the irrational animals. He seems to me to say something like those who, out of hatred for people they detest, accuse them of the very things for which their dearest friends are praised. For just as in their case hatred blinds them so that they do not see that they are also accusing their dearest friends by what they think are slanders against their enemies, in the same way Celsus too, his reasoning confused, has not seen that he is also accusing the Stoic philosophers, who rightly put man, and in a word rational nature, ahead of all irrational beings, and say that providence made all things principally for its sake. And rational beings have the place of the principal things, like children being born; while irrational and inanimate things have the place of the afterbirth created together with the child. And I think that, just as in cities those who oversee the goods for sale and the market oversee them for no other reason than for human beings, yet dogs and other irrational animals also share incidentally in the abundance, so providence cares principally for rational beings, and it has followed that irrational beings too enjoy what comes about for human beings. And just as a person errs who says that the market overseers care no more for human beings than for dogs, since dogs too share incidentally in the abundance of the goods for sale, so much more are Celsus and those who think as he does impious toward God, who cares for rational beings, when they say: "Why are these things produced as food for human beings rather than for plants, trees, grass, and thorns?"