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| Chapter LXXVI
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Chapter
LXXVI.
After this, Celsus, desirous of maintaining that
Providence created the products of the earth, not more on our account
than on that of the most savage animals, thus proceeds: “We
indeed by labour and suffering earn a scanty and toilsome
subsistence,3999
while all things
are produced for them without their sowing and ploughing.”
He does not observe that God, wishing to exercise the human
understanding in all countries (that it might not remain idle and
unacquainted with the arts), created man a being full of
wants,4000
in order that by
virtue of his very needy condition he might be compelled to be the
inventor of arts, some of which minister to his subsistence, and others
to his protection. For it was better that those who would not
have sought out divine things, nor engaged in the study of philosophy,
should be placed in a condition of want, in order that they might
employ their understanding in the invention of the arts, than that they
should altogether neglect the cultivation of their minds, because their
condition was one of abundance. The want of the necessaries of
human life led to the invention on the one hand of the art of
husbandry, on the other to that of the cultivation of the vine; again,
to the art of gardening, and the arts of carpentry and smithwork, by
means of which were formed the tools required for the arts which
minister to the support of life. The want of covering, again,
introduced the art of weaving, which followed that of wool-carding and
spinning; and again, that of house-building: and thus the
intelligence of men ascended even to the art of architecture. The
want of necessaries caused the products also of other places to be
conveyed, by means of the arts of sailing and pilotage,4001
| 4001 διὰ
ναυτικῆς καὶ
κυβερνητικῆς. | to those who were without them; so that even
on that account one might admire the Providence which made the rational
being subject to want in a far higher degree than the irrational
animals, and yet all with a view to his advantage. For the
irrational animals have their food provided for them, because there is
not in them even an impulse4002
towards the
invention of the arts. They have, besides, a natural covering;
for they are provided either with hair, or wings, or scales, or
shells. Let the above, then, be our answer to the assertions of
Celsus, when he says that “we indeed by labour and suffering earn
a scanty and toilsome subsistence, while all things are produced for
them without their sowing and ploughing.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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