Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit

As, therefore, the living God is incomprehensible, so also that which is bounded by him is not measured by any measures which come within the range of our intellect; and, perhaps, inasmuch as it is of circular form and skilfully

Therefore, after he has said what is becoming on this subject, he proceeds to add, "But the birds he did not divide;" [*](Genesis xv. 10. ) meaning, by the term birds, the two reasonings which are winged and inclined by nature to soar to the investigation of sublime subjects; one of them being the archetypal pattern and above us, and the other being the copy of the former and abiding among us.

And Moses calls the one which is above us the image of God, and the one which abides among us the impression of that image, "For," says he, "God made man," not an image, "but after the image." [*](Genesis i. 27. ) So that the mind which is in each of us, which is in reality and truth the man, is a third image proceeding from the Creator. But the intermediate one is a model of the one and a copy of the other.

But by nature our mind is indivisible; for the Creator, having divided the irrational part of the soul into six portions, has made six divisions of it, namely, sight, taste, hearing, smelling, touch, and voice; but the rational part, which is called the mind he has left undivided, according to the likeness of the entire heaven.

For in this, also, there is is a report that the outermost sphere, which is destitute of motion, is preserved without being divided, but that the inner one is divided into six portions, and thus completes the seven circles of what are called the planets; for I imagine the heaven is in the world the same thing that the soul is in the human being. They say, therefore, that these two natures, full of reason and comprehension—that, I mean, which exists in man and that which exists in the world—are both at all times entire and indivisible. On this account, therefore, it is that the scriptures tell us, "He did not divide the birds."

For our own mind is here compared to a dove, since that is a creature which is tame and domesticated among us; and the turtle dove is compared to the model presented by the other, that is to say, by the mind of the world, the heaven; for the word of God is fond of retirement, and solitude, and privacy; not mixing itself up with the crowd of things which have been created and will be destroyed, but being at all times accustomed to roam on high, and being anxious to be an attendant only on the one supreme Being. [*](Genesis xv. 10. ) [*](Genesis i. 27. )

For it is the divine Word which divided and distributed every thing in nature; and it is our own mind which divides every thing and every body which it comprehends, by the exertion of its intellect in an infinite manner, into an infinite number of parts, and which, in fact, never ceases from dividing.

And this happens by reason of its resemblance to the Creator and Father of the universe; for the divine nature, being unmingled, uncombined with any thing else, and most completely destitute of parts, has been to the whole world the cause of mixture, and combination, and of an infinite variety of parts: so that, very naturally, the two things which thus resemble each other, both the mind which is in us and that which is above us, being without parts and indivisible, will still be able in a powerful manner to divide and distribute all existing things.

Therefore, after Moses has mentioned the facts of birds not being cut in two pieces or divided, he proceeds to say, "And the birds came down and descended upon the bodies which were divided;" [*](Genesis xv. 11. ) using indeed expressions which are synonymous, but still representing the variance which exists in the facts in a most visible manner to those who are able to see. For it is contrary to nature that birds should come down, when they have been given wings for the purpose of soaring on high.

For, as the earth is the most appropriate place for land animals, and above all for reptiles, which do not endure even to crawl upon it, but seek caves and lurking places, avoiding the regions which are above, on account of their kindred with the things which are below; so, in the same manner, the air is the appropriate abode for the winged race, the element which is by nature light is the proper home for those creatures which are light by reason of their being feathered. When, therefore, those creatures, whose nature it is to traverse the air and who ought to roam through the aether, descend and come down upon the land, they are unable to live a life according to their nature.

On the other hand, Moses approves, in no ordinary degree, of whatever reptiles are able [*](Genesis xv. 11. )

We must, therefore, think that they are full of every description of misery, which, having been brought up in the air, and in the aether which is the purest of all things, have changed their abode (not being able to bear the satiety of divine things), and have descended to that mortal and evil district, the earth. And there are innumerable imaginations concerning an innumerable variety of things which roam about upon it also; some voluntary, and some out of ignorance, which are in no respect different from winged creatures, and which Moses compares to the birds that come down.