On the Workmanship of God

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–6.15 · 7.1–12.17 · 13.1–20.9

1. 1.1Lactantius dedicates the book to his former pupil Demetrianus as proof that he keeps studying even in hard times.
2. 1.2Lactantius promises to write for the benefit of Christians, “the philosophers of our school,” who are criticized for not living up to their name.
3. 1.3Lactantius will spare no labor, remembering his calling, and hopes Demetrianus does the same.
4. 1.4Even amid public duties, a good conscience looks up to heaven.
5. 1.5Lactantius rejoices in his friend's prosperity but fears it may gradually corrupt his mind.
6. 1.6Earthly pleasures are not true goods but deceptive and treacherous.
7. 1.7The devil, cunning and now violent, uses earthly allurements as invisible snares.
8. 1.8Caution is needed, since snares lie hidden on every side.
9. 1.9Demetrianus should despise or at least not admire his prosperity, remembering his heavenly Father and citizenship.
10. 1.10The body was designed to serve and obey the soul as its master.
11. 1.11The body is an earthen vessel for the soul, made not by Prometheus but by God, and Lactantius will try to explain the design of both.
12. 1.12Cicero treated this subject too briefly in On the Republic, book 4.
13. 1.13Cicero referred to his treatment in On the Laws and tried again in On the Nature of the Gods, book 2.
14. 1.14Since Cicero did not finish the task, Lactantius will undertake it.
15. 1.15Philosophers rashly claim certain knowledge of hidden heavenly and earthly things beyond the senses.
16. 1.16Studying the design of our own body is legitimate, for its parts plainly reveal God's providence.
17. 2.1God gave humans sense and reason, showing that they are his offspring, since he himself is reason.
18. 2.2Animals, lacking reason, were given natural coverings against the cold.
19. 2.3Each kind of animal has its own defense: weapons, speed, cunning, or hiding.
20. 2.4Animals are armed with wings, hooves, horns, teeth, or claws.
21. 2.5Prey animals survive by living apart from predators or by breeding abundantly.
22. 2.6Man was made naked and unarmed because reason and intelligence supply what nature withheld.
23. 2.7Animal weapons and coverings would make man ugly, just as animals would be ugly without them.
24. 2.8In animals usefulness and beauty agree wonderfully.
25. 2.9Man, being immortal, was armed inwardly in the soul rather than with bodily defenses.
26. 2.10The Epicureans foolishly criticize nature to deny providence and ascribe everything to chance collisions of atoms.
27. 2.11Lactantius passes over Epicurean criticisms of the cosmos to focus on the human body.
28. 3.1Epicureans complain that humans are born helpless, like shipwrecked sailors, while animals are born ready for life.
29. 3.2They call nature a stepmother to humanity, whose infants can only wail at the evils ahead.
30. 3.3Such complaints are thought wise but are in fact the height of folly and ingratitude.
31. 3.4God, able to do anything, necessarily made what was best.
32. 3.5Human weakness at birth does not hinder growth or health, since reason compensates.
33. 3.6Opponents say animals rear their young without effort, unlike humans.
34. 3.7Birds labor greatly to build nests, incubate, and feed their young.
35. 3.8Humans do no more than birds, except that they keep their children bound to them by lasting love.
36. 3.9Birds' young are even more fragile than human infants, being born first as eggs and then helpless.
37. 3.10No one blames nature for the frailty of birds; the critics pick only convenient examples.
38. 3.11Would the critics choose human wisdom with weakness, or animal strength with an animal nature?
39. 3.12No one would really choose irrational strength over human reason, but the critics want both at once.
40. 3.13Reason and natural defenses exclude each other; if nature supplied everything, reason would have nothing to do.
41. 3.14Reason fulfills the work of natural defenses and is God's greatest gift.
42. 3.15Though physically weak, man is better equipped than any animal because of reason.
43. 3.16Man is safe from all animals, and none are safe from him.
44. 3.17Reason gives man more than nature gives animals, for all are subject to human power.
45. 3.18Seeing even elephants serve man, no one should complain of a small body; to do so is ingratitude or madness.
46. 3.19Plato gave thanks that he was born a human being.
47. 3.20Those who envy animals would beg to be human again, since hands and speech are worth more than wings or strength.
48. 3.21It is madness to prefer what one would refuse if offered.
49. 4.1Epicureans argue from disease and early death that humans were not made by providence.
50. 4.2God made humans frail so that they could die, since mortality requires a body that can be dissolved.
51. 4.3A being immune to disease would be immune to death; the critics want everyone to live to a hundred.
52. 4.4Guaranteeing a long life would require immortal strength, which would exclude death altogether.
53. 4.5Nothing in the human body of bone, sinew, organs, and blood could be proof against frailty and death.
54. 4.6Every visible, tangible matter is fragile; an unbreakable body would have to come from heaven.
55. 4.7Being mortal and bodily, man had to have an earthly, fragile body open to death at any time.
56. 4.8Since the body must one day dissolve, disease and early death are part of its nature.
57. 4.9Suppose, as the critics wish, that no one could die before old age.
58. 4.10A man who could not die before old age would need no food and would be a god; the critics really complain that they are not immortal.
59. 4.11Mortality and immortality cannot be combined; one who will die at all is mortal throughout life.
60. 4.12Man is necessarily mortal at every age, and it could not rightly have been otherwise.
61. 4.13Having denied providence, the Epicureans had to explain everything by chance collisions of atoms.
62. 4.14Denying providence forced them to hold that souls die with bodies, and to look for supposed flaws in creation.
63. 4.15They criticized the very features that best show providence, without thinking through the consequences.
64. 4.16Without liability to disease man would need no shelter or clothing; wisdom was given to protect his frailty.
65. 4.17Because reason requires frailty, frailty brings death; only an invulnerable being would escape old age and death.
66. 4.18If death came only at a fixed age, people would become arrogant and inhuman, since social bonds arise from awareness of frailty.
67. 4.19Weak animals herd together for protection; strong ones live alone.
68. 4.20If humans needed no help from one another, there would be no society, order, or humanity.
69. 4.21Human weakness leads people to form society for a better and safer life.
70. 4.22Human reason and wisdom depend on man's nakedness, frailty, disease, and mortality.
71. 4.23It is plain that nothing exists without providence, whose works are too many to discuss.
72. 4.24Lactantius will limit himself to the visible human body, the vessel of the soul, to show God's providence.
73. 5.1God shaped animals not as spheres but with a head and feet so they could move and seek food.
74. 5.2Animals have four limbs; in beasts the front pair are feet, in man they are hands for making and holding.
75. 5.3In birds the front limbs are wings, so one design serves different uses.
76. 5.4The spine is a keel of many jointed bones, allowing walking and bending.
77. 5.5The curved ribs form a protective frame around the soft inner organs.
78. 5.6The head, seat of government of the body, is named caput, according to Varro, because the senses begin there.
79. 5.7The limbs are built of a few large bones, balancing mobility and strength.
80. 5.8Limb bones are hollow and filled with marrow, with rounded ends so they can be bound by sinews and turn safely.
81. 5.9The joints are covered with cartilage for painless movement and shaped differently for different purposes.
82. 5.10Ball joints at the shoulders allow movement in all directions; hinge joints at knees, elbows, and hands bend one way.
83. 5.11Movement in all directions suits the shoulder but would be useless and ugly at the elbow.
84. 5.12Too flexible an arm would look like an elephant's trunk.
85. 5.13God gave the elephant a trunk because its short neck and tusks would otherwise keep it from feeding.
86. 6.1Lucretius, following Epicurus, claimed that countless monstrous creatures arose by chance and perished because they could not feed or breed.
87. 6.2To make room for atoms Epicurus denied providence, yet absurdly invented animals lacking design.
88. 6.3Everything that exists was made with design, so nothing could arise without it.
89. 6.4In making each creature, God provided for both its life and its reproduction.
90. 6.5A skilled architect plans every part of a building before beginning.
91. 6.6Just as an architect plans ahead, God provided everything needed for life before giving life.
92. 6.7Seeing design in bodies, Epicurus added a further absurdity to protect his theory.
93. 6.8Epicurus claimed that eyes, ears, and feet were not made for their uses; the uses arose afterward.
94. 6.9Lactantius will answer Epicurus's folly, lest he think himself clever.
95. 6.10Since eyes can only see, they were made for seeing; the uses of the members prove their design.
96. 6.11Every creature plainly serves the function for which it was made.
97. 6.12If chance ruled, we would find creatures that hear with their noses and see with their ears.
98. 6.13If atoms tried every arrangement, monsters would be born every day.
99. 6.14The constant order of every kind and member proves design, not chance.
100. 6.15Lactantius postpones further refutation of Epicurus and returns to providence.
101. 7.1God joined the bones with sinews so that the mind could steer the whole body with the slightest effort.
102. 7.2God covered the bones with flesh, watered it with veins and blood, and clothed it with skin, hair, scales, or feathers.
103. 7.3One basic body plan yields countless different appearances among living creatures.
104. 7.4Almost every animal has the same order of parts, from head down to feet.
105. 7.5Even the parts of the head sit in the same places in every animal, yet their shapes vary without end.
106. 7.6Each creature is most beautiful in its own form; swapping features between kinds would only make them ugly and awkward.
107. 7.7The tail of four-footed animals covers and protects their bodies and drives off pests.
108. 7.8Man, having reason and hands, needs neither tail nor fur; each kind is fitted to its own nature.
109. 7.9God covered man's head with hair as the fitting crown of his body, arranged to suit each part.
110. 7.10The arrangement of hair around brow, temples, ears, and the back of the head is wonderfully comely.
111. 7.11The beard marks maturity and sex and adorns manly strength; nothing in the design could be otherwise.
112. 8.1Lactantius turns to the design of the human body, member by member.
113. 8.2God made man alone upright to look toward heaven, his origin, while the beasts, with no hope of immortality, face the ground.
114. 8.3Man's upright form and godlike face witness to his Maker; the mind rules the body from the head as from a citadel.
115. 8.4God made man's head round, since the sphere is the perfect shape.
116. 8.5The head covers the mind like a heaven; the face is furnished with the organs it needs.
117. 8.6God gave two eyes and two ears, both for beauty and so that sounds from either side are more easily heard.
118. 8.7The outer ear's hollow shape catches sound like a funnel, so that it does not fly past.
119. 8.8God made the ears of cartilage, between soft skin and rigid bone, so that they are both firm and flexible.
120. 8.9God covered the gem-like eyes with transparent membranes so that images pass through to the inner sense.
121. 8.10It is the mind that sees through the eyes, not images flowing in or rays flowing out, as philosophers claim.
122. 8.11Because sight is instantaneous, it is clearly the mind that looks out through the eyes as through windows.
123. 8.12Lucretius foolishly argued that if the mind saw through the eyes, it would see better with the eyes torn out.
124. 8.13Lucretius and Epicurus were blind to the fact that a wounded, scarred eye socket admits no light at all.
125. 8.14Seeing through mere holes would be like looking through a narrow reed.
126. 8.15Eyes had to be round and set at the front of the face to see widely and freely.
127. 8.16Providence made two matching eyes, moving within limits, filled with clear fluid, with the pupils at their center.
128. 8.17The mind looks through both eyes, and their two sights are wonderfully joined into one.
129. 9.1Those who call the senses false point to drunkards seeing double, but the cause is simply that we have two eyes.
130. 9.2Anyone, sober or not, sees double when an object is too close, because the two lines of sight meet only at a certain distance.
131. 9.3When the mind relaxes its attention the eyes see separately; when it focuses again, the double image becomes one.
132. 9.4Wine or madness keeps the mind from focusing the two eyes; one-eyed people never see double.
133. 9.5The senses are not false: when healthy they are not deceived, and when they are, the mind recognizes the error.
134. 10.1God protected the eyes with eyelids.
135. 10.2The eyelids, fringed with lashes, blink so fast that they refresh the eyes without interrupting sight.
136. 10.3Blinking keeps the eye's surface moist and clear.
137. 10.4The eyebrows shield the eyes from above and the nose separates and guards them.
138. 10.5The cheekbones protect the eyes from below against blows.
139. 10.6The nose is bone above and soft cartilage below.
140. 10.7The nose serves for breathing, smelling, and draining the head, and God made its openings without spoiling the face.
141. 10.8Dividing the nostrils in two keeps the face beautiful.
142. 10.9The number two, joined into one, is essential to the perfection of the body, which has right and left sides.
143. 10.10Like paired hands and feet, the head's senses come in pairs, because even the one brain is divided into two halves.
144. 10.11The heart too has two chambers, so that the body, like the universe, is a unity made from pairs.
145. 10.12The mouth is shaped for two tasks, eating and speaking.
146. 10.13The tongue shapes speech, helped by palate, lips, and above all the teeth.
147. 10.14Infants cannot speak before they have teeth, and toothless old men stammer like children.
148. 10.15Only humans, and birds with their songs, use the tongue for sounds like this.
149. 10.16The tongue also gathers and swallows food; it helps animals drink as well.
150. 10.17Animals lap water with the tongue, which God protected under the palate and behind the wall of the teeth.
151. 10.18God covered the hard, grinding teeth with gums and lips so that they are not ugly.
152. 10.19The lips are gracefully shaped, the upper with a small groove, the lower turned outward.
153. 10.20Taste is sensed by the sides of the tongue, not the palate, and, like smell, it takes nothing away from what is tasted.
154. 10.21Chin, neck, shoulders, arms, and elbows are all beautifully and usefully shaped.
155. 10.22The hands, servants of reason, are shaped to hold things and end in fingers both beautiful and useful.
156. 10.23The number, order, joints, and nails of the fingers are all well designed.
157. 10.24The thumb, set apart and opposed to the fingers, governs all grasping and is named for its strength.
158. 10.25The thumb has only two free joints, the third being joined into the hand for beauty.
159. 10.26Man alone has a broad, open chest, fitting for a being filled with reason from heaven, while the beasts' chests face the ground.
160. 10.27Nipples nourish infants in women and adorn men; the navel is the mark of the unborn child's nourishment.
161. 11.1The inner organs are made not for beauty but for use, to nourish the body as rain nourishes the earth.
162. 11.2God placed the stomach in the middle of the body to digest food and spread its nourishment.
163. 11.3Since man is body and soul, the soul has its own organ, the lung, which is porous rather than a bag.
164. 11.4The lung takes in and gives back breath gradually, and this alternation sustains life.
165. 11.5Two pipes run through the neck: the gullet for food and the windpipe for breath.
166. 11.6The gullet stays closed and opens only as solid food and drink pass through.
167. 11.7The breath, unable to force its own way, has an open windpipe made of soft rings.
168. 11.8The windpipe is always open; the uvula checks the rush of air, and the nostrils admit breath and smell.
169. 11.9The windpipe opens into the mouth as well as the nose, near the tonsils.
170. 11.10Without that opening into the mouth we could not speak.
171. 11.11God opened a path for the voice so the tongue could form words; if it is blocked, a person is mute.
172. 11.12Mute people do not have a bound tongue; their voice cannot reach the mouth and escapes through the nose.
173. 11.13Disease can block this passage, causing both muteness and deafness; the passage exists for speech.
174. 11.14The opening also lets us breathe hot air or breathe when the nose is blocked by a cold.
175. 11.15Digested food and drink spread their nourishment through the whole body.
176. 11.16The long, coiled intestines, held by one band, slowly move the food along to extract its nourishment.
177. 11.17God lined the intestines with a slippery fluid so that waste would not lodge in their coils.
178. 11.18The bladder fills with urine though no pipe connects it to the intestines.
179. 11.19The upper intestines are wider and thinner-walled than the rest.
180. 11.20Liquid seeps from these intestines through the thin bladder wall and is collected for discharge.
181. 12.1Lactantius turns to the womb and conception.
182. 12.2In males the seminal vessels are paired, as dissection of animals shows.
183. 12.3Lactantius holds, with ancient opinion, that the right side is male and the left female.
184. 12.4Whether seed comes from the marrow or the whole body, the mind cannot tell.
185. 12.5The womb, in this view, has two horns, right for males and left for females.
186. 12.6Varro and Aristotle teach that male and female seed combine, the heart forms first, and the body is complete in forty days.
187. 12.7Since in eggs the eyes form first, Lactantius thinks formation begins with the head.
188. 12.8Children resemble whichever parent's seed prevailed.
189. 12.9The more abundant seed prevails, so a child often resembles one parent only.
190. 12.10An even mixture yields a child resembling both parents or neither.
191. 12.11Animal offspring likewise blend or combine their parents' colors.
192. 12.12In this ancient theory, male seed in the left side yields a boy with feminine traits.
193. 12.13Female seed in the right side yields a girl with masculine traits.
194. 12.14When each seed falls on its proper side, sons and daughters are born true to their nature.
195. 12.15God made two sexes, joined by pleasure, so that each kind might continue in spite of death.
196. 12.16Men were given more strength so that women would accept the marriage yoke; vir and virtus come from vis, strength.
197. 12.17Mulier is from mollitia, softness; a mother's breasts fill with milk to feed the infant until it can take solid food.
198. 13.1Out of modesty Lactantius declines to describe the genitals.
199. 13.2The wicked turn God's holy provision for procreation into prostitution and lust, seeking only barren pleasure.
200. 13.3The buttocks are firm and fitted for sitting.
201. 13.4Strong thighs bear the body and the knees give the bend needed to walk and sit.
202. 13.5The shapely calves strengthen and adorn the legs.
203. 13.6The feet, the body's foundation, are long and flat so that man can stand on two feet.
204. 13.7The toes match the fingers in number, but are short and in a row, the big toe set only a little apart.
205. 13.8The toes give the push needed for running; Lactantius now turns to what is doubtful or obscure.
206. 14.1Much in the body is understood only by its Maker.
207. 14.2No one can say what the membrane around the bowels is for.
208. 14.3Varro's etymology of the kidneys is wrong, and the purpose of kidneys, spleen, and liver is obscure.
209. 14.4Some say anger lies in the gall, fear in the heart, and joy in the spleen; this is doubtful.
210. 14.5Some say the liver digests food; others that it houses sexual desire.
211. 14.6Such theories cannot be verified; otherwise timid animals would have larger hearts and gentle ones less gall.
212. 14.7We would feel it if we were angry with our gall, as we feel that we see with our eyes.
213. 14.8Where the passions arise cannot be known; the workings of mind and soul are beyond human insight.
214. 14.9All the organs together keep the soul in the body, but only their Maker knows each one's task.
215. 15.1Grammarians and philosophers wrongly define the voice as air struck by breath.
216. 15.2A likelier view is that breath striking the throat makes the voice, as breath blown across a reed makes a sound.
217. 15.3Only God knows; the voice seems to come from deep in the chest, since sound can come even with the mouth closed.
218. 15.4How the voice arises and what it is remain unknown.
219. 15.5This is not Academic scepticism: some things exceed human understanding, but many can be known by sense and reason.
220. 15.6Lactantius postpones his full reply to the philosophers and continues.
221. 16.1The nature and seat of the mind are unknown, and philosophers disagree about them.
222. 16.2Lactantius offers his opinion without claiming certainty, to show the greatness of God's works.
223. 16.3If the mind is in the breast, it is wonderful that it shines with reason in darkness and is present throughout the body.
224. 16.4Others place the mind in the brain, at the top of the body, as the ruler of the world dwells on high.
225. 16.5The sense organs are in the head and lead to the brain; otherwise perception would be slow.
226. 16.6The mind seems to rule from the head, like God in heaven, but withdraws into the breast to deliberate.
227. 16.7Deep in thought, we neither hear nor see what is around us.
228. 16.8Either way, how the mind moves between head and breast is a wonder.
229. 16.9The mind is so swift that it never rests and can range over heaven, sea, and land in an instant.
230. 16.10If the human mind cannot be confined by the body, no wonder God's mind is present everywhere and rules all things.
231. 16.11No one understands how the incorporeal mind is joined to the body; this shows God's power.
232. 16.12Even if the mind is spread through the whole body, as Xenocrates held, its nature cannot be understood.
233. 16.13Aristoxenus wrongly held that the mind is nothing but a harmony of the body, like the tuning of a lyre.
234. 16.14In this view the soul is the harmony produced by the body's well-joined parts.
235. 16.15As a broken string ruins the music, so on this view bodily damage destroys sensation, which is death.
236. 16.16The comparison fails: a lyre cannot play itself, but the soul thinks and moves of its own accord.
237. 16.17A harmony would need an outside player; the soul does not.
238. 16.18Lactantius mocks Aristoxenus: his own badly tuned mind needed a player to strike it.
239. 17.1Though its nature is unknown, the soul is immortal, since what moves itself and is invisible must be eternal.
240. 17.2Philosophers call the soul blood, fire, or wind, but none of them has really explained it.
241. 17.3The soul is not blood, but is fed by blood as a lamp's light is fed by oil.
242. 17.4The soul is not fire, for it perceives, is invisible, and does not burn; it is something like God.
243. 17.5Varro defined the soul as air breathed in, warmed, tempered, and spread through the body.
244. 17.6We may not know what the soul is, yet we can know that some claims about it are false.
245. 17.7The soul is given not at birth but at conception, since the unborn child already lives, grows, and moves in the womb.
246. 17.8Varro's definition would make us dead for nine months in the womb; none of the three views is true.
247. 17.9Blood, heat, and breath all sustain life, but the soul itself can no more be described than seen.
248. 18.1Are the life-principle and the mind one thing or two? There are arguments on both sides.
249. 18.2Some hold that life and sensation are inseparable, so soul and mind are one.
250. 18.3Others argue they differ, since madness destroys the mind but not life, and sleep stills the mind while the soul lives on.
251. 18.4In sleep the mind is kept busy by dreams, lying hidden like fire under ash.
252. 18.5While the mind is awake the body cannot truly rest, even lying still.
253. 18.6Only when the mind turns to dream images does the body fully rest.
254. 18.7In the dark, thought slides gradually into dream images, and the mind begins to see what it was thinking of.
255. 18.8Dreams distract the mind at night as real sights do by day, so that the body can rest.
256. 18.9God gave dreaming for the sake of rest, but kept the power to teach man the future through dreams.
257. 18.10Histories record fulfilled dreams, and the prophets received revelations in dreams.
258. 18.11Some dreams are false and serve sleep; true ones are sent by God to warn of coming good or evil.
259. 19.1Is the soul inherited from father, mother, or both? Lactantius will settle it.
260. 19.2Souls do not come from the parents, since nothing can be split off from an incorporeal soul.
261. 19.3God alone creates souls; as Lucretius says, all are born of heavenly seed and have one father.
262. 19.4Souls come from God, the Father of all; parents only supply the bodily material, which is why they pray for children.
263. 19.5Conception, formation, the soul, and safe birth are all God's work; our breath and life are his gift.
264. 19.6Wisdom too is God's gift, not the father's, which is why wise parents may have foolish children and the reverse.
265. 19.7Even if the stars have influence, God made them and does all things; it is foolish to credit his works instead.
266. 19.8God left it in our power to use his gift and bound us by the sacred pledge of virtue to win life.
267. 19.9Whoever keeps faith with the pledge of virtue is blessed and like God; the true man is hidden within the visible body.
268. 19.10Whoever gives in to the flesh falls to earth; whoever keeps his upright state and masters earthly things will merit eternal life.
269. 20.1Lactantius tells Demetrianus this brief work must suffice until he can write more fully of the true philosophy.
270. 20.2He plans to write against the philosophers about the blessed life.
271. 20.3He will refute the eloquent philosophers with their own contradictions, showing they spread error.
272. 20.5If even Cicero was often beaten by plain men who spoke the truth, truth can prevail against clever eloquence.
273. 20.6Philosophers claim to defend the truth but cannot defend what they do not know.
274. 20.7Only God's gift can grant him the ability and time to fulfill his promise.
275. 20.8He wishes to live only to write something that helps readers to live well.
276. 20.9He will be content if his work frees some from error and sets them on the road to heaven.