The dignity of rational nature

A discourse on the text, 'God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good,' and on the fact that divine words are more precious than all pleasures.

The borders of piety are beautiful, not blooming with earthly seasons, but bursting with heavenly flowers. The flowers are those of piety, which are the fruits of the divine way of life. For virtues lead us toward that wonderful and original beauty, that which was made according to the image of God and according to likeness. This likeness according to virtue cannot be called a horse instead of a man. When we pursue this, we are no longer named wolf, dragon, serpent, or scorpion, being carried away toward the insolence of the irrational; rather, we are a wonderful and precious image of God, preserving the original beauty of the character, and we are, and we are called, and we are believed to be so.

Become a master of the irrational; do not imitate the habits of the servants, not because the irrational are vile, for nothing evil was created from the Good. Let no one suppose that the irrational are placed in a land of wickedness because they provide an image of wickedness for those living not according to virtue. For if this were so, how did the Scripture say, 'And God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was good,' and not merely good, but also very good? When, then, the things that came to be were provided as an image of wickedness—for the lion is an image of the tyrant, and the serpent of the crooked and most evil way, and the scorpion of plague, and the wolf of the robber—where would the things that came to be be good, if they were so obviously being received as an image of wickedness? It is necessary for those who love learning to know that these things are not evil by their own nature, nor are they called so, but by the irrational...

A state precedes them; but when it comes into the rational nature, it insults the vision and blunts rational freedom. You have received, O man, a masterly value; do not share in the dishonorable and slave-like rank of the irrational. For you insult yourself by imitating the ferocity of the irrational; not as if the irrational were being evil or being called evil, but as a dishonorable and slave-like image that is not becoming to the free.

For just as a distinguished and renowned man is insulted and disgraced if he puts on or wraps himself in a slave's attire—not because the garment is bad and filthy, but because it is becoming to a slave and not fitting to a free man—so if you take on the character of a scorpion and a wolf, it is not the nature of the irrational that is slandered, but your own state, which possesses mastery, is insulted as it pursues the rank of a slave.

These things are necessary for me, so that no one may take the things said to be an insult to creation as if God had made something bad. For all things are truly beautiful, and very beautiful, if they guard their own rank and pursue their own law. And so that you may learn, beloved, that nothing has become bad by God according to nature, God has taught us to take the image of these irrational things. For he placed certain advantages of the irrational to be imitated, so that we may not slander the things that have happened as evil, not at all their nature, but only those aspects as far as they fit a rational state.

Or did you not hear the Proverb-maker saying today, 'Go to the ant, O sluggard, and observe its ways'? Do you not understand how, by setting the industry of the ant as a premise, he instructed us toward our own unsluggish readiness? We did not teach you explicitly from the...