Latin Translation of Basil's Hexaemeron 9.1–9.6

Tell me, I beg, how the morning table of our discourse seemed to you. For I like to compare my slenderness to some poor man giving a banquet, who, longing to show the generosity of his spirit abundantly, falls short, held back by lack of means, and so tries to serve his poor fare, such as it is, all the more lavishly, and makes himself a laughing-stock to his guests. So it happens that his attempted liberality is not free from the shame of reproach. Something of this kind is true of us too, unless you think otherwise; yet however our things stand, they will not be belittled by you. For the guests of that time did not reject Elisha as a bad host (2 Kgs 4:38–41), though he refreshed them with wild herbs. I am aware of certain rules of allegory, not which I made up myself, but which I learned from reading the volumes of others, by which those who will not agree to the common sense of the Scriptures say that water is not water but some other nature, and interpret fish, serpents, or beasts not according to the reason of truth but according to their own will, like interpreters of dreams, who, when various images have been seen in sleep, declare what will come to pass according to their own wish. But I, when I hear "grass," understand what is said. Likewise fish, four-footed animals, or plants, I take as they are reported: "For I am not ashamed of the gospel" (Rom 1:16). For although those who have written much about the world have argued about certain shapes of the earth, describing it now like a sphere, now like a cylinder, now like a disc, gathered equally on all sides, and hollow in the middle, the writers of cosmography have slipped into all such opinions, each overturning the doctrines of the other. Yet I am not led to say that our account of creation seems inferior for this reason, that the servant of God said nothing about its shapes, and did not say that the circuit of the earth holds so many thousand stadia, nor measured how far its shadow stretches in the air when the sun runs its course beneath the earth and, coming near the moon, causes its eclipse. About all these things he wisely kept silent, knowing that things that do not concern us are useless to us. Should we for this reason think the spiritual words less valuable than the vainest assertions of the philosophers, and not rather glorify God, who freed our mind from superfluous questions and arranged that everything be set forth to stir up and build up our souls? Hence some, ignorant of the matter, seem to me to strive by wicked seductions and false persuasions to cast over the divine Scriptures a certain colour of respectability by arguments of their own. What else must this be understood to be than that such men profess themselves wiser than the spiritual words, and rather establish their own sayings under the pretext of interpretation? Therefore let it be understood as it is written: "Let the earth bring forth the living soul of cattle, beasts, and serpents."

Notice, then, the word of God running through all creation. It began long ago, but it is still at work and hastens toward its end, until the world receives its consummation. For as a ball, when it has been pushed by someone and meets a downward slope, is carried along faster, driven by its own roundness and the steepness of the place, and cannot stop before it comes down to level ground, so the nature of things, set in motion by God's command, passes everywhere through the making of things born and dying, and keeps the offspring of each kind equally by likeness to itself, until it can reach the appointed end. For it makes horse succeed horse, lion lion, eagle eagle, and, keeping each animal by the succession of those that follow, leads them on to the end and conclusion of all things. No time will be able to change the properties of animals, but, as if the nature had been established only lately, it is carried along fresh through time. "Let the earth bring forth the living soul." This command remained in the earth, and in no way ceases to serve the Creator. For while there is no doubt that certain creatures are born from the descendants of those first made, we see others even now formed and given life from the earth. For when watered by rains it produces not only cicadas and very many thousands of other flying creatures, most of which lack names because of their smallness, but we also see mice and frogs generated from the earth. Indeed, around Egyptian Thebes, if heavy rains fall in summertime, the whole region is soon filled with countless mice. And it is quite certain that eels are born in no other way than from mud: their kind is renewed neither by egg nor by any other birth, but, as we said, they obtain the origin of their generation from slime. "Let the earth bring forth the living soul." All beasts are earthly, and so they are bent toward the earth. But man is another, a heavenly plant, who differs from cattle as much in dignity as in the bearing of his form. Their head is bent downward and looks toward the belly, and follows what is pleasant to its appetite; but your head is always raised to heaven, your eyes look on things above. But if you too defile yourself with the pleasures of the body, obeying the luxury of the belly and of its lower parts, you have been compared to the senseless beasts and become like them (Ps 49:12). Another care, and a most fitting one, is yours: to seek the things above, where Christ is (Col 3:1). It is fitting for you to be borne higher than earthly things, so as to order your life as you were born. "Let your citizenship be in heaven" (Phil 3:20); your true homeland is the Jerusalem above; you have as fellow citizens and companions the firstborn enrolled in heaven (Heb 12:23).

"Let the earth bring forth the living soul." The soul of four-footed animals, then, was not laid up long before under the earth and then suddenly cast out and leapt forth, but was created together with the command. They have one kind of soul, and all their beauty lies in their shape; each is distinguished by various properties. Oxen are heavy and steady, asses dull, horses hot with desire for females. The wolf is untameable, the fox crafty, the deer timid, the ant industrious, the dog grateful and mindful of friendship; and qualities of character too have been fitted to the births of each, as anger is inborn in the lion, and a solitary way of life and avoidance of its like. For, like a tyrant of the beasts, lifted up by the vice of natural pride, it shuns the company of others; it does not feed on daily food, and will not return even to the remains of its own catch. Nature has given it a very great power of voice, so that certain four-footed animals, though swifter in running, are terrified by its roar and fail. The leopard is fierce and sharp in its attack, and has a body suited to the motions of its spirit. The nature of bears is more sluggish, their mind harsh and sly, and covered no less with fat than with deceit. If we wished to extend the discourse further and set out how much care for preserving their own safety is supplied to many animals without anyone's teaching, perhaps we would be stirred to zeal for our own protection; but I fear that we may be thought inferior even in imitating beasts. A bear, often pierced with a deadly wound, uses every contrivance to heal itself, chiefly by stopping its wounds with a certain plant of drier nature. The fox too has often been caught applying pine resin to itself as a remedy. And the tortoise, when it has filled the gullet of its belly with vipers' entrails, is said to escape the plague of the poisonous food by the remedy of marjoram, which is contrary to serpents. The snake, by feeding on fennel, cures the most severe pains of its eyes. And as for the foreknowledge of beasts about future changes of the sky, what reasonable prudence is it not believed to surpass? The sheep, when winter is approaching, crops grass more greedily, as if showing that it is refreshing itself more fully to endure the scarcity of the coming storm. And oxen, when they have been shut in for a long time in winter, sensing a disturbance of the air by natural understanding, all together look out from the stall, changing their expression. Many men have observed that the land hedgehog makes two openings in its den, so that when it is pressed by north winds it may move to the southern side, and again when the south wind blows it may open the northern hole. What, then, does Scripture signify to us human beings by these signs? Not only that we should contemplate through all things how great our Creator's kindness toward us is, but also that we should consider that, since dumb beasts have such great foresight of the future, we ought by no means to defile ourselves with the pleasures of the present life, but direct our intention to the age to come. Will you, then, O man, not labour in this world so as to lay up for yourself the means of future rest, when you see the ant, mindful of winter, diligently gathering its food in summer? It is no less diligent because it does not yet experience the dangers of winter; rather, with every effort and watchful care, it labours and works, and, running about, tries everything so as to store up sufficient food for itself; and with wonderful prudence it takes care that what has been gathered is not spoiled. For it cuts the grain with its teeth, lest it begin to sprout and provide it with useless food; and if the seed itself has been moistened by the vapour of the earth, it dries it in the sun. Yet it does not always do this, but only when it senses that the fair weather will be settled. Indeed, you will not see rain sent from the clouds while the ant has put out its seed to dry under the sun. What speech, then, can comprehend, what hearing take in, or how much time suffice to explain all these wonders? Therefore let us too say with the prophet: "How great are your works, O Lord! In wisdom you have made them all" (Ps 104:24). So that excuse will not help us, by which we think we can defend ourselves, saying that we did not learn what is profitable from books, since we are believed to have received the choice of useful things by the teaching of the natural law. For you know the good you ought to do to your neighbour, and the evil you would not wish to suffer from another. No art of healing, no experience of herbs, showed beasts the remedies to be sought; but each animal naturally knows how to look after its own safety and to seize an ineffable diligence by inborn prudence.

Yet there are among us too certain kinds of virtues which we obtain not from human teaching but from the handing down of nature. For as no instruction teaches us to hate sickness, but we have a spontaneous horror of everything believed to grieve us, so there is in the soul a natural duty to avoid what is harmful. Every evil is a disease of the soul, and virtue brings the principle of health. Hence some have well defined health as the steadiness of the natural motions. Who will not be judged mistaken in asserting this of the vigour of the soul? For the soul by nature always seeks what is its own; and therefore chastity is to be praised by the prudent, justice pursued, wisdom followed, courage admired. These things are more natural to souls than health is to bodies. "Parents, love your children; children, do not provoke your parents" (Eph 6:4). Has not nature commanded this same thing? So Paul urges nothing new, but tightens more closely the bonds of nature. So great is its force in affection that even the wolf fights for its cubs. What will a man say who both despises the command and scorns nature, when as a youth he disfigures his father's grey hairs with insults, or as a father, having entered a second marriage, grieves the children of his former union over the inheritance? The love of wild beasts between parents and offspring is unfeigned, because God who created them made up by the benefit of sense for what he gave them less of in reason. So it happens that, with so many thousands of sheep present, a lamb let out of the fold at once recognizes its mother's voice, runs to her leaping, and seeks the fountains of milk. And even if the mother happens to be rather dry, it is content with her alone and passes by the udders of others, however abundant and full. And the mother too recognizes her own young in so great a multitude. Yet the voice is one in the different animals, the colour one, the smell the same, as far as we can gather by our sense of smell; but they have a sharper perception than man, by which each recognizes its own. The puppy has not yet formed teeth, and yet it tries to drive off attackers with its mouth. The calf's horns have not yet come up, and already it knows in which part its weapons for fighting will be. These things, then, show us that natural prudence does not use the handing down of teaching, and that nothing is disordered or improvident in things, but all show in themselves the surest sign of the wisdom of the Creator, who equipped the beasts so for the defence of their own safety. The dog indeed lacks reason, but it is believed to possess a sense equal to reason. For what some, sitting at leisure through a long life, could scarcely discover, that is, the worldly philosophers (I mean the snares of syllogisms), the dog is said to achieve by a natural gift. For, tracking the trails of wild beasts keenly, when it sees the paths cut across in many directions, it interrupts them all by running about, uttering only no articulate voice; for by what it does it clearly shows where the beasts it is tracking have gone. It leaves no place unexplored, even where there is no suspicion of a trail, until, having gone over all by smell and unravelled the deceptive paths, it finds the lair. What more do those do in their demonstrations who sit at leisure marking the dust with a pen, and of three propositions take away two and find the truth in the one that remains? And the dog's memory of a kindness done to it puts to shame what man ungrateful to his benefactor, when many dogs, their masters killed in a deserted place, have died after keeping watch a very long time? Others, when their masters were slain, revealed the murder, and brought the guilty before the courts, carrying out the accusation by barking. What, then, will those say who not only do not love God, their Creator and shepherd, but even have his slanderers as friends, eat with them at the same table, and allow the giver of the feast to be torn by the sacrilegious words of blasphemers?

But now let us return to the contemplation of creation. Weaker beasts are more fruitful, namely hares, deer, and wild sheep, so that their kind may not easily be destroyed when consumed by flesh-eating beasts. But those that devour others are less fertile. Indeed the lioness scarcely becomes a mother of one lion: for at birth it tears its mother's womb with its claws, like the viper, which comes forth only by eating and tearing its mother's belly, paying its parent a fitting reward for such a birth. So nothing in [created] things is improvident, nor is anything without the care proper to it. And if you examine more carefully the very limbs of beasts, you will find that the Creator gave them nothing superfluous and denied them nothing necessary. To flesh-eating beasts he gave sharp teeth, since they needed such for the service of the kind of food appointed for them. And to those to whom he gave teeth on one side only, he arranged that they should have receptacles for much fodder, so that the part first taken in runs back from the stomach to the teeth, so that it may more easily be ground by chewing the cud and be digested without labour. For not without cause did he give certain animals a gullet and stomach providing necessary uses. The camel has a long neck for this reason: so that, being equal to its legs, it may easily reach the food it seeks. But the neck of bears is short and pressed into the shoulders, and likewise that of the lion, the tiger, and similar beasts, whose food is not grass and who have no need to bend to the ground, since they feed on flesh. What shall we say of the elephant's trunk? Since it is the greatest of all beasts and terrible to those who see it, it was fitting that it be formed with huge limbs. If its neck had matched their size, it would be immovable, bent downward by its very weight. But now its neck and head are joined to the spine by a few bones, and it has a trunk that does the service of a longer neck, taking food and drawing up water. And its legs are joined by no knee joints, so that like columns they may support the heaviness of the weight placed on them. For if its legs had been slender and shaky, it would undoubtedly suffer constant dislocations of the joints, as they would not be able to lift such a mass when it got up. So you see how, like bodily towers, they are placed in front of the battle line in time of war, or set against the enemy like living mountains to break through their defences. If the foundations of their steps were not equal to their size, so great a bulk could not be carried at all. The elephant is said to live three hundred years and more, and, as we said, to bring food to itself by the service of its trunk, which, like a winding and slippery serpent, is bent this way and that. So the saying is true that asserts that nothing too little and nothing superfluous is found in creation. Yet God commanded this very beast, so huge, to be subject to us, so that it understands what it is taught and endures when it is beaten, plainly declaring that all things were subjected to us because we were made in the image of God; and that we can contemplate his inestimable wisdom not only in the largest animals, but consider the same wonders in the smallest little creatures too. For as I do not so much wonder at the peaks of great mountains, because, being near the clouds, they endure the heaviest storms with constant winds, or on the contrary at the hollows of caves, because they not only escape the roaring of the winds by which the heights are shaken but also rejoice in a perpetual mildness of climate: so in the form of animals I am not so much amazed at the vastness of the elephant as at the mouse, which is frightening to the elephant, or at the very fine sting of the scorpion, which the craftsman's wisdom has hollowed like a pipe, so that through it it may inject poison into those it wounds. But let no one on this account blame the Creator, that he set venomous beasts in our life. For so someone might also accuse the teacher of children who, compelling them to keep the duties of discipline, chastises their wantonness and impudence with threats and blows.

Rather, we understand that harmful things point us to the confession of faith. For if you trust in the Lord, "you will walk upon the asp and the basilisk, and you will trample the lion and the dragon" (Ps 91:13). Remember how Paul, when he was gathering sticks, was bitten by a viper and received no harm, for this reason: that this most holy man was full of faith. But if you are unfaithful, you should fear not so much the serpent as your own unbelief, by which you have made yourself liable to perdition. But now I feel that I am being pressed for the debt concerning the birth of man, and I hear the voices of the hearers murmuring in their hearts, that we teach what our things are like but do not know ourselves. It is necessary, then, to remove that cloud which darkens the senses of men; for truly, of all things the hardest is to know oneself. For not only does the eye, looking at things outside, fail to see itself, but the mind itself too, contemplating others' faults sharply enough, is slower in recognizing its own vices; hence now too our discourse, having run quickly through others' acts, is duller and slower in examining what we are. And yet we can reckon the Creator not so much from the composition of the elements as from our own formation, if only each is willing to look at himself wisely, as the prophet says: "Your knowledge has been made wonderful from me" (Ps 139:6); that is, while I look at myself, I learn the power of your ineffable wisdom. "And God said, Let us make man." Where now are the Jews, who, when in the preceding words the light of the Godhead was shining as through certain chinks, and the second person, mystically declared but not yet clearly seen, resisted, saying that God speaks to himself, since he himself said and he himself made: "Let there be light, and there was light"? Their follies, which they now bring forth, were indeed ready to hand then too. For what smith, carpenter, or shoemaker, standing alone in his workshop with no partner of his art present, says to himself, "Let us make a sword," or "let us put together a plough," or "let us make a shoe," and does not rather silently begin the form he has designed in his mind? For it is vain chatter that any man should strictly command himself to do something, like a judge or a censor. Though what will those who crucified the Lord not say, having tongues trained to lying, even if the present word has utterly closed their mouths? "And God said, Let us make man." Until, then, there existed one who could be taught, the proclamation of the Godhead was hidden in the deep. But when the creation of man began to be awaited, faith was revealed and the doctrine of truth shone out clearly. Hear, you Jew who resist Christ, how he addresses the partner in the making of the world, through whom he made the ages, who upholds all things by the word of his power; but your mind does not receive the words of piety. For as wild beasts, when shut in cages, gnaw the bars with their teeth, showing their own bitterness, yet cannot satisfy their fury, so the Jew, the adversary of truth, constrained in the narrowness of his bonds, asserts that there are many persons to whom the Word of God went forth. For they say that he said to the angels, "Let us make man." A truly Jewish fiction, and a fable worthy of their faithlessness! Not to receive one, they confess many; they join servants to the Son by sharing his dignity, make our fellow servants the authors of the formation of man, and want to make the angels equal to the perfecter of man, though it is absurd that any creature could be equal to its maker. Let us consider also what follows: "Let us make man in our image." What do you answer? Is the image of God and of the angels one? For the image of the Father must necessarily be the same as that of the Son, yet in such a way that the form is understood as befitting God, that is, consisting not in bodily shape but in the divine property. Listen, you too, who come out of the new circumcision, carrying on the worship of Judaism under the pretence of Christianity. To whom does he say "in our image" if not to the brightness of glory and the stamp of the Father's substance, who is the image of the invisible God (Heb 1:3)? He speaks, then, to his own image, who said, "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30), and "He who sees me sees my Father also" (John 14:9); to him he says, "Let us make man in our image." For where there is unity of image, nothing can be unlike. For he did not say "in our images"; as Scripture also testifies: "God made," it says, "man"; not "they made." He wisely avoided now a multitude of persons, so that, while he confounded the Jew there, here he might exclude the rite of paganism. Therefore he mentioned the unity, so that you might recognize that the Son is together with the Father, and might avoid the danger of a multitude of persons. "In the image of God he made man." Again he brings in the person of the co-worker. For he did not say, "He made in his own image," but "in the image of God." In what man is appointed to have the image of God, or how he receives the likeness of the Godhead, will be told in what follows, Christ granting understanding; for now it is enough to have said that the image is one. But why did it enter your mind to blaspheme so sacrilegiously as to say that the Son is unlike the Father? O ungrateful mind! The likeness of God which you yourself have received, you do not allow your benefactor to have. And what you have received from heavenly grace you want to be your own, but you do not allow the likeness implanted by nature in the Son to be shared with his begetter. But now the evening time bids us be silent, the sun having long since sunk to its setting. Therefore let us end here too the course of our discourse, content with what has been said. For we have discussed in the present only as much as can sharpen your attention. A fuller treatment of the questions set before us we shall give you another time, with the Holy Spirit's assent. So now, rejoicing, furnish your tables with the memory of what has been related, in place of abundant dishes and various fruits. Let the impious be confounded, let the Jew blush, let the righteous rejoice in the proclamations of the truth; let the Lord be glorified, now and always, and for ages of ages. Amen.