69. These casuists, who ask questions of that kind not because (continued)
21Z AUGUSTINE: EARLIER WRITINGS they want to examine them seriously but because they are loquacious and want to ventilate them, are wont also to trouble the faith of the less learned by pointing to the pains and labours of animals. What evil, they say, have the animals deserved that they suffer such woes, or what good can they hope for in having such troubles imposed on them? They say that or feel like that because they have a perverted sense of values. They are not able to see what the chief good is, and they want to have everything just as they conceive the chief good to be. They can think of no chief good except fme bodies like the celestial bodies which are not subject to corruption. And so without any sense of order they demand that the bodies of animals shall not suffer death or any corruption, as if forsooth they were not mortal, being lowly bodies, or were evil because celestial bodies are better. The pain which the animals suffer commends the vigour of the animal soul as admirable and praiseworthy after its own fashion. By animating and ruling the body of the animal it shows its desire for unity. For what is pain but a certain feeling that cannot bear division and corruption? Hence it is clearer than day that the animal soul is eager for unity in the whole body and is tenacious of unity. Neither gladly nor with indifference, but reluctantly and with obstinate resistance it meets bodily suffering which it is grieved to know destroys the unity and integrity of the body. We should never know what eagerness there is for unity in the inferior animal creation, were it not for the pain suffered by animals. And if we did not know that, we should not be made sufficiently aware that all things are framed by the supreme, sublime and ineffable unity of the Creator.
70. Indeed, if you give pious and diligent attention, every kind of creature which can come under the consideration of the human mind contributes to our instruction, speaking by its diverse movements and feelings as in so many diverse tongues, ever}^where proclaiming and insisting that the Creator is to be recognized. There is no creature that feels pain or pleasure which does not by some sort of unity attain a beauty appropriate to its own kind, or some sort of stability of nature. There is no creature sensitive to pain or pleasure which does not, simply by avoiding pain and seeking pleasure, show that it avoids its own destruction and seeks unity. In rational souls all desire for knowledge, which is the delight of the rational nature, refers its acquisitions to unity, and, in avoiding error, avoids nothing so much as the confusion of incomprehensible am-