25. By, for example, being eaten by another! This is surely what he must mean in the context.
Book III 231
For the simple reason, of course, that some are the proper diet of others. Nor can we have any right to say, "There shouldn't be some on which others feed." All things, you see, as long as they continue to be, have their own proper measures, numbers and destinies.24 So all things, properly considered, are worthy of acclaim; nor is it without some contribution in its own way to the temporal beauty of the world that they undergo change by passing from one thing into another.25 This may escape fools; those making progress have some glimmering of it; to the perfect it is as clear as daylight.
And certainly all such goings-on in the animal world provide us human beings with plenty of salutary admonitions; thus we should observe what trouble we ought to take over our spiritual, everlasting health and welfare by which we so surpass all non-rational animals, when we see them, from the biggest elephants down to the smallest little worms, doing whatever they are capable of, whether by resisting or by taking precautions, to safeguard their bodily, time-bound health and welfare, such as has been allotted to them according to their place on the lower scale of creation. None of this would be evident unless there were some beasts that prey on the bodies of others for the sustenance of their own bodies, while the others look after themselves either by their ability to fight back or by their speed in taking flight, or by taking refuge in their hiding holes.
And after all, even bodily pain in any animate creature is itself a great and wonderful power of the soul, which is quickening the entire organism and holding it together by being mixed in with it in a manner beyond words, and giving it a certain unity in its own small measure; the pain it feels means, if l may so put it, that it is not indifferent to the organism being spoiled or broken up, but reacts to this with indignation.
A worry about the bodies of the dead that have been eaten by wild animals
17, 26. Granted that dangerous animals injure living human beings either as a punishment or to provide them with salutary and useful tests and trials or to cure their ignorance of themselves, this other point may doubtless still worry some people: why they also tear to pieces for their food the bodies of dead human
24. He is alluding to Wis 1 1:20: You have arranged all things in measure, number and weight. Here, instead of"weights" as the last of the trio, Augustine has ordines. He discusses this text at considerable length later on in this work. Book 1V,3,7 to 5,12; or rather he uses it in his discussion of why there were six days of creation; and he uses the verb ordino in connection with "weight." He extends the notion of weight to cover the natural tendency of everything towards its own proper place, to cover what the scholastics will call the natural appetite in things, which in human beings is the will and its love. Thus by their "weight" things are pointed towards their proper end, ordained to their proper destiny. So here, after some hesitation, 1 have decided on "destinies" as the best word to render ordines. 25. By, for example, being eaten by another! This is surely what he must mean in the context.