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Wherefore let not the mind truly religious, and submitted to the true
God, suppose that demons are better than men, because they have
better bodies. Otherwise it must put many beasts before itself which
are superior to us both in acuteness of the senses, in ease and
quickness of movement, in strength and in long-continued vigor of
body. What man can equal the eagle or the vulture in strength of
vision? Who can equal the dog in acuteness of smell? Who can equal
the hare, the stag, and all the birds in swiftness? Who can equal in
strength the lion or the elephant? Who can equal in length of life the
serpents, which are affirmed to put off old age along with their skin,
and to return to youth again? But as we are better than all these by
the possession of reason and understanding, so we ought also to be
better than the demons by living good and virtuous lives. For divine
providence gave to them bodies of a better quality than ours, that that
in which we excel them might in this way be commended to us as deserving
to be far more cared for than the body, and that we should learn to
despise the bodily excellence of the demons compared with goodness of
life, in respect of which we are better than they, knowing that we too
shall have immortality of body, not an immortality tortured by eternal
punishment, but that which is consequent on purity of soul.
But now, as regards loftiness of place, it is altogether ridiculous
to be so influenced by the fact that the demons inhabit the air, and we
the earth, as to think that on that account they are to be put before
us; for in this way we put all the birds before ourselves. But the
birds, when they are weary with flying, or require to repair their
bodies with food, come back to the earth to rest or to feed, which the
demons, they say, do not. Are they, therefore, inclined to say
that the birds are superior to us, and the demons superior to the
birds? But if it be madness to think so, there is no reason why we
should think that, on account of their inhabiting a loftier element,
the demons have a claim to our religious submission. But as it is
really the case that the birds of the air are not only not put before us
who dwell on the earth; but are even subjected to us on account of the
dignity of the rational soul which is in us, so also it is the case
that the demons, though they are aerial, are not better than we who
are terrestrial because the air is higher than the earth, but, on the
contrary, men are to be put before demons because their despair is not
to be compared to the hope of pious men. Even that law of Plato's,
according to which he mutually orders and arranges the four elements,
inserting between the two extreme elements-namely, fire, which is in
the highest degree mobile, and the immoveable earth, the two middle
ones, air and water, that by how much the air is higher up than the
water, and the fire than the air, by so much also are the waters
higher than the earth, this law, I say, sufficiently admonishes us
not to estimate the merits of animated creatures according to the grades
of the elements. And Apuleius himself says that man is a terrestrial
animal in common with the rest, who is nevertheless to be put far
before aquatic animals, though Plato puts the waters themselves before
the land. By this he would have us understand that the same order is
not to be observed when the question concerns the merits of animals,
though it seems to be the true one in the gradation of bodies; for it
appears to be possible that a soul of a higher order may inhabit a body
of a lower, and a soul of a lower Order a body of a higher.
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