Against Celsus 4.81

The noble fellow does not see how many philosophers, who introduce providence and say it does all things for the sake of rational beings, he does away with, as far as in him lies, together with useful doctrines in which Christians agree with philosophy; nor how much harm, hindering piety, comes from accepting that man differs in no way before God from ants or bees. He says: "If human beings seem to differ from the irrational animals because they have built cities and use a constitution and offices and positions of command, this is nothing to the point; for ants and bees do too. Bees, at any rate, have a leader, and there is following and service, wars and victories, and the capture of the defeated, and cities and suburbs too, and succession of work, and punishments against the idle and wicked; at any rate they drive out the drones and punish them." Here too he has not seen the difference between things accomplished by reason and reasoning and things that come about from an irrational nature and mere constitution. For these no reason present in those who do them accounts (for they do not have it); but the most ancient one, the Son of God and King of all subject things, made an irrational nature that helps, as irrational, those not counted worthy of reason. Among human beings, then, cities came into being with many arts and an ordering of laws; and constitutions and offices and positions of command among human beings are either those properly so called, certain earnest dispositions and activities, or those so named by a looser use of words, in imitation of those as far as possible. For those who have made laws successfully looked to those and established the best constitutions, offices, and positions of command. None of these can be found among irrational beings, even if Celsus applies to ants and bees the rational names that are assigned to rational beings: city, constitutions, offices, and positions of command. In these matters we must in no way praise the ants or the bees (for they do not act with reasoning), but we must admire the divine nature, which extended even to irrational beings a kind of imitation, as it were, of rational beings, perhaps to shame rational beings, so that looking at ants they may become more industrious and more careful to store up what is useful to them, and considering bees they may obey those in command and divide among themselves the useful works of the state for the preservation of cities.