Against Celsus 4.87

Let it be granted that other antidotes too are known by animals. What has this to do with showing that it is not nature but reason that discovers these things in animals? For if it were reason that discovered them, not just this one thing alone would be found, fixed, in snakes (let there be a second and a third), and something else in the eagle, and so with the other animals; rather, as many things as in human beings. But as it is, it is plain from the fact that each animal's nature has been inclined, in a fixed way, toward certain helps, that there is no wisdom or reason in them, but a certain natural constitution toward such things for the preservation of the animals, brought about by the Word. And yet, if I wished to close with Celsus on these matters, I would have used the saying of Solomon from Proverbs, which runs thus: "There are four things that are least on the earth, but these are wiser than the wise: the ants, which have no strength, but prepare their food in summer; and the rock-badgers, a people not strong, who made their houses in the rocks; the locust has no king, yet marches in good order at one command; and the gecko, which supports itself on its hands and is easily caught, lives in the strongholds of the king." But I do not use these sayings as though their sense were plain; rather, in keeping with the title (for the book is titled Proverbs), I examine them as riddles. For it is the custom of these men to divide things that show one thing on the surface but convey another in a hidden sense into many kinds, one of which is proverbs. That is why in our Gospels too our Saviour is written to have said: "I have spoken these things to you in proverbs; the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in proverbs." It is not, then, the perceptible ants that are wiser even "than the wise," but those indicated as in the form of proverbs. And the same must be said of the other animals. But Celsus thinks the books of the Jews and Christians are altogether very simple and unlearned, and supposes that those who interpret them allegorically do so by forcing the intent of the writers. Let Celsus, then, be refuted by this too as slandering us in vain; and let his argument about snakes and eagles, which declared them wiser than human beings, be refuted as well.