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Now that we have solved, as well as we could, this very difficult
question about the eternal God creating new things, without any
novelty of will, it is easy to see how much better it is that God was
pleased to produce the human race from the one individual whom He
created, than if He had originated it in several men. For as to the
other animals, He created some solitary, and naturally seeking lonely
places, as the eagles, kites, lions, wolves, and such like; others
gregarious, which herd together, and prefer to live in company, as
pigeons, starlings, stags, and little fallow deer, and the like:
but neither class did He cause to be propagated from individuals, but
called into being several at once. Man, on the other hand, whose
nature was to be a mean between the angelic and bestial, He created in
such sort, that if he remained in subjection to His Creator as his
rightful Lord, and piously kept His commandments, he should pass
into the company of the angels, and obtain, without the intervention
of death, a blessed and endless immortality; but if he offended the
Lord his God by a proud and disobedient use of his free will, he
should become subject to death, and live as the beasts do, the slave
of appetite, and doomed to eternal punishment after death. And
therefore God created only one single man, not, certainly, that he
might be a solitary, bereft of all society, but that by this means the
unity of society and the bond of concord might be more effectually
commended to him, men being bound together not only by similarity of
nature, but by family affection. And indeed He did not even create
the woman that was to be given him as his wife, as he created the man,
but created her out of the man, that the whole human race might derive
from one man.
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