Against Celsus 4.86

Next, as though striving to bring the human race down still further and make it like the irrational animals, and wishing to leave out nothing of what is reported of irrational animals that shows something greater, he says that the arts of sorcery too exist in some irrational animals, so that human beings may not pride themselves especially on this either, or wish to have superiority over the irrational animals. He says this: "And if human beings think something of themselves for sorcery, here too snakes and eagles are wiser; at any rate they know many antidotes and charms against harm, and indeed the powers of certain stones for the protection of their young; and when human beings chance upon these, they think they have a wonderful possession." First, I do not know how he called sorcery the animals' experience, or some natural apprehension, of natural antidotes; for the name sorcery is customarily applied to something else. Unless perhaps, as an Epicurean, he covertly wants to disparage all use of such things as belonging to the professions of sorcerers. But let it be granted to him that human beings pride themselves on knowing these things, whether they are sorcerers or not: how does it follow that snakes are wiser than human beings in this, because they use fennel for sharpness of sight and quickness of movement, grasping only this natural thing not by reasoning but by their constitution? Human beings do not come to such a thing from bare nature like snakes, but partly from experience and partly from reason, and sometimes by reasoning and according to science. So too, if eagles find the so-called eagle-stone and carry it to their nest for the protection of their young, how does it follow that eagles are wise, and wiser than human beings, who found by experience the natural help given to eagles and used it by reasoning and with understanding?