should reckon that animals innocent of reason have a human understanding of
450 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis speaking, if it heard him while not possessed by the devil. As for snakes being thought to hear and understand the words of the Marsi,40 so that they frequently jump out of their holes when they are being charmed by them, here too diabolical power is operating, to help us acknowledge providence at work everywhere and to observe what thing it subjects to which in the natural order, and what it permits even to evil wills by the wonderfully wise exercise of authority, so that it is far more common for snakes and serpents to be swayed by human incantations and charms than any other kind of animal.
All this too, you see, lends no little support to the truth ofhuman nature at the beginning having been seduced by the conversation of a serpent. Demons, l mean to say, rejoice at having been given the power to get snakes dancing at the incantations of human beings, always eager to deceive in any way at all those whom they are able to. They are permitted to do this, however, to keep the memory alive in us of that first deed, which showed on what familiar terms they are with that species. What is more, that first deed was permitted in order to give the human race, for whose education this narrative would duly have to be written down, a significant symbol in snakes of all diabolic temptation. This will become clearer, when we come in due course to the first words of the divine sentence passed on the serpent.
29, 36. So then, the cleverest—that is the most cunning—of all the wild beasts (Gn 3: 1 ); the serpent was said to be this on account of the devil's cunning, which was displaying his trickery in and through the serpent. It is like the way we talk about a clever or cunning tongue, which is moved by a clever or cunning person to make a clever or cunning point. This, l mean to say, is not a power or capacity of the bodily organ which is called a tongue, but of course of the mind which is making use of it. In the same way the typewriters ofjournalists41 can be said to lie; while lying, you see, only falls in the province of living and sentient beings, the typewriter is said to lie because a liar spreads his lies by means of it. lndeed this serpent could be called a liar, because the devil used it like a typewriter to spread his lies.
37. The reason l have thought it worthwhi le dwelling on this is in case anyone should reckon that animals innocent of reason have a human understanding of things, or can suddenly be changed into rational animals; this would be the first erring step to holding that ridiculous and noxious opinion about the changing round either ofhuman souls into animals, or those ofanimals into human beings.
40. "A people in Latium, on the Lacus Fucinus, celebrated as wizards and snake-charmers; in the Social War the most zealous enemies of the Romans"; so Lewis & Short. 1t is disappointing to see Augustine, usually so interested in exotic natural phenomena, jumping to the conclusion that snake-charming is something only to be done with diabolical cooperation. 4 1 . Scribarum; 1 cannot resist calling them journalists, though Augustine's times were innocent of that nowadays all-pervasive—and indeed invaluable—tribe of scribblers. What 1 have turned into their typewriters is the rather more archaic stilus.