would be born of them and in succeeding to them would preserve the shape and
Book III 227 sometimes cover every non-rational animal. But there is also the word ferae, which usually has the same value in the Latin language as "beasts";20 however, that was no reason for neglecting a consideration ofhow these names, which are not put here in this passage of scripture for nothing, can be specifically distin guished from each other, something that can easily be noted in everyday speech.
The special point of the phrase "according to kind"
1 2, 1 8. The reader may also wonder, and not withoutjustification, whether the phrase according to kind comes up again and again just by chance, as it were, or whether there is some meaning in it, as though they were already in existence beforehand, though the account of their creation is only now being given. Or can it be that "their kind" is to be understood as being in the higher, that is of course the spiritual, ideas according to which they are created lower down the scale? But if that were the case, this would also have been said about light, about heaven, about the waters and the lands, about the lamps of heaven. Which of these is there that does not have its eternal and unchanging idea powerfully present in the very Wisdom of God, who reaches mightilyfrom end to end, and disposes all things sweetly (Wis 8: 1 )? In fact, though, this expression begins to be used about the grasses and the trees, and so on until we get to these terrestrial animals, because although it is not used about those that were created from the water at their first mention, it is there all the same at the repetition, where it says: And God made the great whales and every soul ofcrawling animals, which the waters produced according to their kind, and every winged flying thing according to kind (Gn 1:21).
19. Or is it because these things sprang into being in such a way that others would be born of them and in succeeding to them would preserve the shape and form of their origin? Is that why they are said to be according to kind, on account of their propagating offspring, with whose continued existence in mind they were being created? But why does it say about the grasses and trees, not only "according to kind," but also according to likeness, since animals too, whether aquatic or terrestrial, reproduce according to their likeness? Or is it that, since likeness follows on kind or genus, he did not want to repeat it every time? After all, neither is mention of seed repeated every time, though it is present in animals, even if not in all of them, as well as in grasses and trees. It has been observed, you see, that some animals are born of water or of earth without having any distinction of sex; and thus their seed is not in them, but in the elements from which they arise by spontaneous generation.
20. 1n the English language we have no distinct name that 1 can think of as an equivalent to "beasts";fera can only be translated as "wild beast."