Against Celsus 4.83

Having spoken about bees, so as to belittle, as far as in him lies, the cities, constitutions, offices, positions of command, and wars for native lands, not of us Christians only but of all human beings, Celsus next adds a detailed eulogy of ants, so that by his eulogy of them he may bring down, in his argument about the ants, human management in the matter of food, and cast aside human foresight for winter quarters as having nothing more than what he supposes is the irrational foresight of the ants. Which of the simpler people, who do not know how to look into the nature of all things, would Celsus not turn away, as far as in him lies, from helping those weighed down by burdens and sharing their toil, when he says of ants that they take over one another's burdens whenever they see one tired? For someone who needs education through reason and has no understanding of it will say: "Since, then, we differ in no way from ants, even when we help those who are tired from carrying very heavy burdens, why do we do such a thing in vain?" The ants, being irrational animals, would not be puffed up to think great things of themselves because their works are compared to those of human beings; but human beings, who can hear through reason how their fellowship is being belittled, might be harmed, as far as Celsus and his words can do it. He does not see that in wishing to turn his readers away from Christianity he turns away even non-Christians from compassion toward those who carry the heaviest burdens. He ought, if he were even a philosopher aware of human fellowship, not only not to do away, along with Christianity, with what is useful among human beings, but also to cooperate, if possible, with the goods that Christianity shares with other human beings. And if ants cut off the sprouts of the grain they store away, so that it does not swell but remains as food for them through the year, one must not suppose that reasoning in ants is the cause of this, but nature, mother of all, which has ordered even irrational beings so as not to leave even the least thing without some trace of the reason that comes from nature. Unless, of course, by this Celsus covertly wants (for in many things he likes to play the Platonist) every soul to be of the same kind, and a man's to differ in no way from that of ants and bees; which is the view of one who brings the soul down from the vault of heaven not to the human body only but to the other bodies as well. Christians will not be persuaded by this, since they have already grasped that the human soul was made "in the image" of God, and see that it is impossible for a nature created "in the image" of God to wipe out its features altogether and take on others, made in the images of I know not what, among the irrational animals.