But it appears to me that in wishing to describe the marvels of winged creatures, I remain further behind than I should if my feet had tried to match the rapidity of their flight. When you see bees, wasps, in short all those flying creatures called insects, because they have an incision all around, reflect that they have neither respiration nor lungs, and that they are supported by air through all parts of their bodies. [1680] Thus they perish, if they are covered with oil, because it stops up their pores. Wash them with vinegar, the pores reopen and the animal returns to life. Our God has created nothing unnecessarily and has omitted nothing that is necessary. If now you cast your eyes upon aquatic creatures, you will find that their organization is quite different. Their feet are not split like those of the crow, nor hooked like those of the carnivora, but large and membraneous; therefore they can easily swim, pushing the water with the membranes of their feet as with oars. Notice how the swan plunges his neck into the depths of the water to draw his food from it, and you will understand the wisdom of the Creator in giving this creature a neck longer than his feet, so that he may throw it like a line, and take the food hidden at the bottom of the water. [1681]
8. If we simply read the words of Scripture we find only a few short syllables. "Let the waters bring forth fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven," but if we enquire into the meaning of these words, then the great wonder of the wisdom of the Creator appears. What a difference He has foreseen among winged creatures! How He has divided them by kinds! How He has characterized each one of them by distinct qualities! But the day will not suffice me to recount the wonders of the air. Earth is calling me to describe wild beasts, reptiles and cattle, ready to show us in her turn sights rivalling those of plants, fish, and birds. "Let the earth bring forth the living soul" of domestic animals, of wild beasts, and of reptiles after their kind. What have you to say, you who do not believe in the change that Paul promises you in the resurrection, when you see so many metamorphoses among creatures of the air? What are we not told of the horned worm of India! First it changes into a caterpillar, [1682] then becomes a buzzing insect, and not content with this form, it clothes itself, instead of wings, with loose, broad plates. Thus, O women, when you are seated busy with your weaving, I mean of the silk which is sent you by the Chinese to make your delicate dresses, [1683] remember the metamorphoses of this creature, conceive a clear idea of the resurrection, and do not refuse to believe in the change that Paul announces for all men.
But I am ashamed to see that my discourse oversteps the accustomed limits; if I consider the abundance of matters on which I have just discoursed to you, I feel that I am being borne beyond bounds; but when I reflect upon the inexhaustible wisdom which is displayed in the works of creation, I seem to be but at the beginning of my story. Nevertheless, I have not detained you so long without profit. For what would you have done until the evening? You are not pressed by guests, nor expected at banquets. Let me then employ this bodily fast to rejoice your souls. You have often served the flesh for pleasure, to-day persevere in the ministry of the soul. "Delight thyself also in the Lord and he shall give thee the desire of thine heart." [1684] Do you love riches? Here are spiritual riches. "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold and precious stones." [1685] Do you love enjoyment and pleasures? Behold the oracles of the Lord, which, for a healthy soul, are "sweeter than honey and the honey-comb." [1686] If I let you go, and if I dismiss this assembly, some will run to the dice, where they will find bad language, sad quarrels and the pangs of avarice. There stands the devil, inflaming the fury of the players with the dotted bones, [1687] transporting the same sums of money from one side of the table to the other, now exalting one with victory and throwing the other into despair, now swelling the first with boasting and covering his rival with confusion. [1688] Of what use is bodily fasting and filling the soul with innumerable evils? He who does not play spends his leisure elsewhere. What frivolities come from his mouth! What follies strike his ears! Leisure without the fear of the Lord is, for those who do not know the value of time, a school of vice. [1689] I hope that my words will be profitable; at least by occupying you here they have prevented you from sinning. Thus the longer I keep you, the longer you are out of the way of evil.
An equitable judge will deem that I have said enough, not if he considers the riches of creation, but if he thinks of our weakness and of the measure one ought to keep in that which tends to pleasure. Earth has welcomed you with its own plants, water with its fish, air with its birds; the continent in its turn is ready to offer you as rich treasures. But let us put an end to this morning banquet, for fear satiety may blunt your taste for the evening one. May He who has filled all with the works of His creation and has left everywhere visible memorials of His wonders, fill your hearts with all spiritual joys in Jesus Christ, our Lord, to whom belong glory and power, world without end. Amen.
[1639] Codex Colb. 1 has the title "about creeping things and beasts."
[1640] Gen. i. 24.
[1641] zoe.
[1642] psuche.
[1643] See note on p. 90.
[1644] Isa. i. 3.
[1645] cf. Lev. xvii. 11.
[1646] hupostasis.
[1647] It may be supposed "that the souls of brutes, being but so many eradiations or effuxes from that source of life above, are, as soon as ever those organized bodies of theirs, by reason of their indisposition, become uncapable of being further acted upon by them, then to be resumed again and retracted back to their original head and fountain. Since it cannot be doubted but what creates anything out of nothing, or sends it forth from itself, by free and voluntary emanation, may be able either to retract the same back again to its original source, or else to annihilate it at pleasure. And I find that there have not wanted some among the Gentile philosophers themselves who have entertained this opinion, whereof Porphyry is one, luetai hekaste dunamis alogos eis ten holen zoen tou pantos." Cudworth, i. 35.
[1648] Empedocles is named as author of the lines: ede gar pot' ego genomen kourete koros te, Thamnos t' oionos te kai ein hali ellopos ichthus cf. Diog. Laert. viii. 78, and Plutarch, D Solert. An. ii. 964. Whether the "faba Pythagoræ cognata" of Hor., Sat. ii. 6, 63, implies the transmigration of the soul into it is doubtful. cf. Juv., Sat. xv. 153. Anaximander thought that human beings were originally generated from fish. Plut., Symp. viii. 8.
[1649] Gen. i. 20.
[1650] Fialon quotes Bossuet, 1st Elev. 5th week: "Qui a donné aux oiseaux et aux poissons ces rames naturelles, qui leur font fendre les eaux et les airs? Ce qui peut être a donné lieu à leur Créateur de les produire ensemble, comme animaux d'un dessin à peu près semblable: le vol des oiseaux semblant, etre une espèce de faculté de nager dans une liqueur plus subtile, comme la faculté de nager dans les poissons est une espèce de vol dans une liqueur plus épaisse." The theory of evolutionists is, as is well known, that birds developed out of reptiles and reptiles from fish. Vide E. Haeckel's monophyletic pedigree in his History of Creation.
[1651] drepanis, i.e. sickle-bird.
[1652] These are the terms of Aristotle, Hist. An. i. 5.
[1653] cf. Arist., Hist. An. viii. 3.
[1654] Whence the proverb koloios poti koloion. Arist., Eth. Nic. I. viii. 6.
[1655] "Super omnia humanas voces reddunt, posittaci quidem sermocinantes." Plin. x. 53.
[1656] Arist., Hist. An. ix. 10.
[1657] Arist., Hist. An. v. 21, and Plin. xi. 17. "Ecce in re parva, villisque nostra annexa, cujus assidua copia est, non constat inter auctores, rex nullumne solus habeat aculeum, majestate tantum armatus: an dederit eum quidem natura, sed usum ejus illi tantum negaverit. Illud constat imperatorem aculeo non uti."
[1658] Rom. xii. 17, 21.
[1659] The ancient belief was that honey fell from heaven, in the shape of dew, and the bee only gathered it from leaves. So Verg., Ec. iv. 30, "roscida mella," and Georg. iv. 1, "aerii mellis coelestia dona." cf. Arist., H. A. v. 22 meli de to pipton ek tou a& 153;ros, kai malista ton astron anatolais, kai hotan kataskephe he iris, and Plin. xi. 12. "Sive ille est coeli sudor, sive quædam siderum saliva, sine purgantis se aeris succus,... magnam tamen coelestis naturæ voluptatem affert." So Coleridge (Kubla Khan): "For he on honey dew hath fed And drunk the milk of Paradise."
[1660] Prov. vi. 8, lxx. The reference to the bee is not in the Hebrew.
[1661] cf. Ælian. v. 13. geometrian de kai kalle schematon kai horaias plaseis auton aneu technes te kai kanonon kai tou kaloumenou hupo ton sophon diabetou, to kalliston schematon hexagonon te kai hexapleuron kai isogonion apodeiknuntai hai melittai.
[1662] The mathematical exactness of the bee is described by Darwin in terms which make it even more marvellous than it appeared to Basil. "The most wonderful of all known instincts, that of the hive bee, may be explained by natural selection having taken advantage of numerous slight modifications of simpler instincts; natural selection having by slow degrees more and more perfectly led the bees to sweep equal spheres at a given distance from each other in a double layer, and to build up and excavate the wax along the planes of intersection." Origin of Species, ii. 255, ed. 1861. According to this view the beings from whom hive bees, as we know them, are descended were gifted with certain simple instincts capable of a kind of hereditary unconscious education, resulting in a complex instinct which constructs with exact precision the hexagonal chamber best fitted for the purpose it is designed to fulfil, and then packs it. And it is interesting to note how the great apostle of abstract selection personifies it as a "taker" of "advantage," and a "leader."
[1663] Arist., Hist. An. ix. 10.
[1664] From pelargos. On the pious affection of the stork, cf. Plato, Alc. i. 135 (§ 61), Arist., H.A. ix. 13, 20, Ælian, H.A. iii. 23 and x. 16, and Plin. x. 32. From pelargos was supposed to be derived the Pythagorean word pelargan (Diog. Laert. viii. 20), but this is now regarded as a corruption of pedartan.
[1665] "Hirundines luto construunt, stramine roborant: si quando inopia est luti, madefactæ multa aqua pennis pulverem spargunt." Plin. x. 49. cf. Arist., Hist. An. ix. 10.
[1666] "Chelidoniam visui saluberriman hirundines monstravere, vexatis pullorum oculis illa medentes." Plin. viii. 41. cf. Ælian, H.A. iii. 25. Chelidonia is swallowwort or celandine.
[1667] "Foetificant bruma, qui dies halcyonides vocantur, placido mari per eos et navigabili, Siculo maxime. Plin. x. 47. cf. Arist., H.A. v. 8, 9, and Ælian, H. N. i. 36. So Theoc. vii. 57: Ch' halkuones storeseunti ta kumata, tan te thalassan Ton te noton tont' euron hos eschata phukia kinei Sir Thomas Browne (Vulgar Errors) denies the use of a kingfisher as a weather-gauge, but says nothing as to the "halcyon days." Kingfishers are rarely seen in the open sea, but haunt estuaries which are calm without any special miracle. Possibly the halcyon was a tern or sea-swallow, which resembles a kingfisher, but they brood on land.
[1668] Arist., H.A. ix. 7.
[1669] Ar. vi. 6 and ix. 34. "Melanaetos...sola aquilarum foetus suos alit; ceteræ...fugant." Plin. x. 3. "Pariunt ova terna: excludunt pullos binos: visi sunt et tres aliquando." id. 4, following Musæus (apud Plutarch, In Mario, p. 426). hos tria men tiktei, duo d' eklepei, hen d' alegizei. On the osprey, see Arist., H.A. ix. 44 and Pliny loc. "Sed ejectos ab his cognatum genus ossifragi excipiunt, et educant cum suis."
[1670] Arist., Hist. An. vi. 6 and ix. 15. So Pliny x. vii. "Nidos nemo attigit: ideo etiam fuere qui putarent illos ex adverso orbe advolare, nidificant enim in excelsissimis rupibus." cf. also Ælian, ii. 46: gupa de arrena ou phasi gignesthai pote alla theleias hapasas.
[1671] This analogy is repeated almost in identical words in Basil's Hom. xxii. De Providentia. cf. also his Com. on Isaiah. St. Ambrose repeats the illustration (Hex. v. 20). The analogy, even if the facts were true, would be false and misleading. But it is curious to note that were any modern divine desirous of here following in Basil's track, he might find the alleged facts in the latest modern science,--e.g. in the so-called Parthenogenesis, or virginal reproduction, among insects, as said to be demonstrated by Siebold. Haeckel (Hist. of Creation, Lankester's ed. ii. p. 198) represents sexual reproduction as quite a recent development of non-sexual reproduction.