Scotus Academicus, Tomus quintus: De Creaturarum Corporalium et de Homine

Just as the fifth day gave inhabitants to the water and to the air, so the sixth gave inhabitants to the earth; for, as Pererius observes, in the first three generative days of the world God distinguished and ordered the Universe itself, separating and setting apart the three principal bodies that compose it, namely Heaven, water, and earth. For on the first day, light having been made, He distinguished day from night, light from darkness: on the second day, by the firmament He separated the heavenly waters from the earthly waters: on the third day He separated the water from the earth; for the plants then produced are reckoned as parts of the earth, since, fixed by their roots in the earth, they arise from it, are nourished by it, and grow by it. But on the remaining three days God, their Creator, both adorned these same three bodies and filled them with various kinds of things, keeping exactly the same order: for on the fourth day He graced Heaven with the stars, on the fifth the water with fishes, and on the sixth day the earth with land animals, and completed it. This Moses indeed expressed in these words: God also said: Let the earth bring forth the living creature in its kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth according to their kinds: and it was so done. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and cattle, and every creeping thing of the earth in its kind. In which words Moses aptly expressed all the brute living things formed by God the Creator of things on the sixth day by these words: the living creature. For all of them agree universally in this appellation of a living soul. Whence by a common word they are called animals by the Latins, because they have life or soul: in which appellation not only the Hebrews agree, who derive the name of animal from the word chaia, that is, life and soul, which word is retained in the languages deriving from Hebrew origin, such as the Chaldaic, Syriac, Arabic, and the like: but also the Greeks, as it seems, imitating zoo — from the Hebrews, or rather the Phoenicians, who nevertheless had nearly the same language as they. But, says Seneca, epistle 58, there are certain things which have a soul, and yet are not animals, for it pleases him well enough that even shrubs have a mind within them: and so we have said that they both live and die; and the tree, adds Cicero, book 5 De finibus, both is nourished, and grows, and thinks, and senses, and flourishes; which things nevertheless are not usually called by the name of animal. But the life of animals, and their soul, surpasses plants by so many degrees that in comparison with them plants seem to have only a shadow of life and certain outlines of it. For to the beasts, as Cicero notes, book 2 De natura Deorum, nature gave both sense and motion, and with a certain appetite an approach to things wholesome and a withdrawal from things pestiferous: but to those things which are born of the earth she gave nothing more than that they should be nourished and grow, by an implanted vital heat, in which is the power of procreation and the cause of generation. Although therefore everything that lives, whether an animal or a thing brought forth by the earth, lives on account of the heat enclosed within it, as Zeno rightly concluded: yet the animal has within itself a certain principality, on account of which it is both moved and senses; neither of which can be attributed to trees and plants. From this it must be understood that animals have a life and soul far more excellent than these: although the rational soul with which man is endowed is far more inward still, for the soul of brutes differs from the human by many degrees and marks: for this is spiritual, that wholly corporeal; the one mortal, the other immortal; the human is endowed with reason, but the bestial is utterly devoid of all reason, whatever Lactantius may protest, who, in book 3 De falsa sapientia, chapter 10, in order to prove that the highest good of man consists in the highest religion, contends that the other things which are thought to be proper to man are found also in the other animals.

For when, he says, they discern and distinguish their own voices by proper signs, they seem to converse, and some appearance of understanding is seen in them; with ears smoothed down, jaws contracted, and eyes relaxed into wantonness, they either sport with man, or each with his own mates and proper offspring. Do they not impart something like mutual love and indulgence? And that by which they provide for themselves for the future, and store up food, surely has providence. Signs of reason also are detected in many of them, for when they seek what is useful to themselves, guard against harms, avoid perils, prepare hiding places for themselves, opening into many exits, they certainly understand something. Can anyone deny that reason is in them, when they often make sport of man himself? For those to whom the office of generating honey belongs, when they inhabit assigned abodes, fortify camps, construct dwellings with unspeakable art, and serve their king — I know not whether perfect prudence has been given to these. It is uncertain therefore whether those things which are attributed to man are common with other living things. They are certainly devoid of religion. For my part, I judge that reason has been given to all living things, but to brutes only for preserving life, to man for propagating it. Thus Lactantius.

But that all these things can be done by brutes without reason, mind, and intellect, is taught, with Thomas Willis, part 1, chapter 6, of the book De anima brutorum, by very many most subtle observers of nature, affirming that beasts execute all these things by inborn natural notions impressed by God, by which they are led to the conservation of their species and of their own individual, as we have taught more fully in the Philosophical works. But that a plainer understanding may be had of the aforesaid words of Moses,

You ask 1. Whether Moses in the aforesaid words sufficiently expressed all the species of land animals without exception as created by God?

I affirm, with the Seraphic Doctor, dist. 15, doubt 2; and he proves it by a twofold argument drawn from the side of motion, and from the side of the end of animals. From the side of motion thus: for every animal that moves is either moved by dragging, and so is a creeping thing; or by impulse, and so is a walking animal; and this is twofold: either it is an animal born to be savage, or to be tame. In the first way it is called a beast; in the second way it is called a beast of burden, and under beasts of burden are comprehended cattle. — From the side of the end: for animals were made on account of man: therefore either they are ordered to the aid of man, as are beasts of burden, as it were aiding: or they are ordered to the exercise of man: and this can be twofold, because they either exercise harm by harming openly, and so are beasts, as it were devastations: or they harm secretly, and so are creeping things, which harm secretly and lie in wait for the heel. And although they would not have these ends in act if man had not sinned, they would nevertheless have them in aptitude; and from that very aptitude man would then have been better instructed in the state of innocence than he is instructed now from act in the state of guilt: and so is manifest the difference and sufficiency of these three.

You ask 2. Whether the most minute animals, and those which are accustomed to be formed from putrid matter, did God also create on the very sixth day?

St. Augustine answers, book 3, De Genesi ad litteram, chapter 11, that they can indeed be said to have been then formed by God on that day. Those most minute things, he says, which arise either from waters or from lands, can indeed be said to have been created then: among which also those are not absurdly understood which are born from those things which arose from the earth when it germinated. And because they had preceded in condition not only the animals but also the lights, and because they are continued with the earth by the connection of roots, whence on that day on which the dry land appeared they arose, they were to be understood as pertaining rather to the supplement of habitation than to the number of inhabitants. But the other things which are generated from the bodies of animals, especially dead ones, it is most absurd to say were created then, since the animals themselves were created; unless because there was already in all animate bodies a certain natural power, and a matter as it were pre-seeded, and, in a certain manner, initiated beginnings of future animals, which were to arise from the corruptions of such bodies, each according to its own kind and differences, through the ineffable administration of the immutable Creator moving all things. — St. Basil answers that the imperfect animals, and those which have their origin from putrescent matter, were brought forth by God in the beginning of the world, in these words: For not in the sea or in rivers were the more perfect fishes generated by the command of God, but also in muddy and marshy places: for frogs, mice, and gnats emerged from the very mud itself, doubtless from the mire. — I answer, with the common opinion of the Interpreters, that this difficulty is to be solved with a distinction: for there are certain animals of this kind which are born most easily, and without any trouble, from excrementitious matter adhering to animals, or from a certain slight corruption, such as lice, fleas, caterpillars, and the like; and these are not seen to have been procreated by God: for otherwise it would have to be said that already then, in the state of innocence, man was beset with lice, since these are born only in the flesh of man, and draw nourishment from the same. But others which require a certain industry, that they may be elicited from putrid matter, such as bees or wasps, and which are not born so easily from corruption, such as wasps, mice, dormice, many serpents, and a great multitude of insects; and these were produced by God.

You ask 3. Whether hybrids, or animals which are generated from the commixture of diverse species, were also produced by God on this day, such as the mule from the mare and the ass, the leopard from the lion and the pard, the lynx from the wolf and the stag?

I answer, that it seems more probable that all animals were in fact created then; both because, although in Africa new species of monsters arise daily, and more may thereafter arise, and can arise, from a new commixture of one species or of other animals; nevertheless this commixture of animals of diverse species is beside nature and altogether adulterine. Whence it was forbidden to the Jews, Leviticus 19, verse 19; because these animals are judged to have been created sufficiently when the other species were created, from whose commixture they were afterwards to be born.

You ask 4. Whether, as animals were produced which live in the other elements, some were also produced in fire?

I answer, that they were not: for no inhabitants were given to fire: for that neither the Salamander nor any other animal can live or endure in fire, Galen teaches, book 3, De temperamentis, and Dioscorides, book 2, chapter 56, where Matthiolus says that he himself tried the very same thing, and cast many Salamanders into the fire, which were quickly consumed. So the Pyraustae, the lampyrides, which are somewhat larger than flies, live in fire only for a brief time. For they are born in the copper furnaces in Cyprus, and in these they leap and walk about through the fire, and soon, flying away from the flame, they die, as Aristotle testifies, book 5, Historia animalium, chapter 19.

You will ask: why did God not bestow His blessing upon land animals, as He did upon fishes and fowl? — The Hebrews answer that the blessing was not given to land animals because among them was the serpent, who a little later was to seduce man, and for that reason was to be cursed by God. But Pererius judges it more probable that Moses wished what he had said concerning the blessing of the fishes to be understood also of land animals, and not only in this, but in other things also, of those which were produced by Moses in some one kind: similar things also must be understood in the others, which were not handed down for the sake of brevity. But the blessing was to be attributed to man properly and separately, because in man there is a certain proper and singular manner of generation and multiplication: namely, not only for the conservation of the species, but chiefly for the completing of the number of the Elect; and lest anyone should think that in the office of generating no sin could be on the part of man. For although the power of generating is altogether natural in the other animals, in man nevertheless it is in part natural, and in part voluntary; and what in others is capable neither of vice nor of virtue can in man be turned either to praise or to crime. But a blessing did not befit plants, since they have no sense, and no affection for propagating offspring.

You ask 5. Whether God could have made, or created, things better than He made, or created, them?

Guillaume of Paris answers, book 1 of De Universo, first part, chapter 23.

That some things, as far as the amplitude and copiousness of His power went, He could have created greater and better than He created them: but those things were not receptive of greater goodness, nor could they be created better, just as perhaps He could not have created the Moon luminous of itself, in like manner as neither the earth: for it would not be earth if it were luminous; nor would the moon be the moon if it had been created luminous of itself; nor would the ass be an ass unless God had made it an irrational animal: nor would the flea be a flea if the Creator had given to it the magnitude of a Whale or of an Elephant. Moreover, the things themselves cannot sustain such mutations and augmentations mutually: for if He had made man of the magnitude of the Sun, the whole earth would not have sufficed him for habitation, nor all the grains and fruits of it for his nourishment; nor all the wools and linens for his clothing; and so this is easy for you to see in the other animals, because in no wise can they endure one another. For if He had made serpents in the likeness of Elephants and Whales, the other animals would not have sustained them. Similarly, if flies had the magnitude of eagles, the whole habitation of the air, which is assigned to birds, would have been occupied and filled by flies alone. Manifest therefore it is to you from these things, that the most wise and best Creator so tempered the whole, that is, the world, or universe, and so regulated the several genera and species, that their magnitudes and smallnesses not only endure one another, but help one another, and can be safe, and be saved together, that is, in the whole itself, or world. But if anyone should say, that it did not befit the infinite power of the Creator, and His infinite goodness, and the immense riches of the same goodness, to have created all things which He created so small, neither the Heavens, nor the world itself: but rather that it was becoming to have created a world incomparably greater, and likewise the Heavens; and, for that magnitude, to have created men and the other animals in the world great; here then you must remember, that bodies and animals could neither be created infinite, nor be so: for elsewhere you have learned that every body, and everything corporeal, is of necessity finite. Therefore, since they had of necessity to be created finite, and to be finite, this question would be the same if the Creator had created all things far greater than they are; for however much greater He had created them, they would nevertheless have been finite; and on this account it could always be asked why He had not created them greater. That measure, therefore, of magnitude and of the other things in created things was not from any defect of power or of goodness in the Creator; but the things themselves, as I have shown you by a few examples, rather required this measure; although it could be said most truly, that by the election and providence of the most wise Giver things were created in these measures and dispositions.

You ask 6. Whether God truly, after the production of the Universe, ceased from all work, as Moses seems to signify, chapter 2, in these words: And God completed the work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all the work which He had accomplished.

The Seraphic Doctor answers, dist. 15, question 3.

First indeed, presupposing that every perfect workman begins a work in order to bring it to perfection: and as he intends, so he does, if the virtue of the agent suffice him throughout; but when he has brought it to perfection, he has what he intends; and every agent acting for an end, that end being obtained for which he acts, rests: therefore every perfect Workman so works that at some time he may rest. Since therefore God is the most perfect agent in producing the Universe itself, it is necessary therefore that He at some time rest. But since the agent is twofold — a certain one that is moved and labors in its operation, and another which is neither changed nor varied: that which acts in the first manner will rest by a quietation which is a privation of motion and labor, as is the created agent: but that which acts in the second manner will rest by a quietation which is not a privation of labor or of fatigue, but which is a cessation from work on account of its own perfection: and thus God is said to have rested from all work, when He had produced the Universe to perfect being; and so He rested when He had brought it to perfect being. These things premised, He answers, secondly, that since the perfection of the Universe is twofold — one according to permanent being, the other according to running being. The first, he says, is attended to in the complete existence of principles, and in the complete number of species, by which species indeed participate of the nature of genus according to the right and ordered intention of nature. But the second perfection consists in the production of those things which run through times, and consequently succeed one another, from whose ordering of succession results a certain beauty and perfection of unity. Since therefore, according to the first perfection, God produced the Universe to being in six days, namely, as to the complete existence of principles, and as to the complete number of species: therefore He is said to have rested from all the work which He had accomplished. But because He works continually for the succession of things by propagation and the multiplication of individuals: therefore He is said to work even until now. From these things the answer to the proposed question is manifest: for it must be conceded that, at the production of animals, especially of man, rest followed on the seventh day; not because a termination of labor had been made, but because a completion of the work begun had been made.

— St. Augustine explains the same question a little otherwise, book 1, De Genesi ad litteram, chapter 12. God, he says, can be understood to have rested from creating the kinds of creatures, because He created no new kinds thereafter: but thereafter, even until now, He works the administration of the same kinds which have now been instituted; not so that on the seventh day itself the power of His Heaven and Earth, and of all things which He had created, should cease from their governance; otherwise they would straightway fall away. For the power of the Creator, and the virtue of the Omnipotent and All-sustaining, is the cause of subsisting for every creature: which virtue, if it should ever cease from governing those things which have been created, the species of those same things would at the same time cease, and all nature would collapse. For not as, when one has built a structure of houses, he departs, and his work stands while he ceases and departs; so the world could fall by the blink of an eye, if God should withdraw from it the governance of itself. Wherefore also what the Lord says, My Father worketh until now, shows a certain continuation of His work, which contains and administers the whole creature. — He adds, ch. 15, that God was indeed said to have rested from work, but not in work. Doubtless, he says, because it is a vice and an infirmity of the soul to be so delighted with its own works that it rests in them rather than in itself: whereas without doubt there is something better in Him by whom they were made than the things themselves which were made: God intimates to us by this Scripture, in which He is said to have rested from all His works which He made, that He was so delighted with none of His works as though He had need of making them, or would have been less had He not made them, or more blessed when He had made them. For because from Him is whatever is from Him, so that it owes to Him what it is, but He owes to no one what He is from Himself, in that He is blessed, He preferred Himself to the things which He made by loving them: not sanctifying the day on which He devised that they should be made, nor that on which He perfected them, lest His joy should seem to be in them, whether making or made: but that on which He rested in Himself from them. And He Himself indeed never lacked that rest, but He showed it to us by the seventh day: whence also He signified that His rest is not attained except by the perfect, since He did not depute to it the day except him who followed the perfection of all things. For He who is always at rest, then rested for us, when He showed that He had rested. — The Cabbalists think that, as God spent a hexaemeron of days in the creation of the world, so He ought to spend a hexaemeron of millenary days in the conservation of the world, so that the world ought to last and be consummated in the space of six millennia, but in the following millennium God will rest. This was the opinion of almost all the Fathers, to which the Platonists and Pythagoreans seemed to come nearest. That they drew this their doctrine from the Hebrews themselves, no one who is at all humane, and imbued with Jewish and cabbalistic literature, will not easily persuade himself. Which can be confirmed by the testimony of Menasseh Ben Israel: The divine theological Cabbalists, whom Plato followed in the Timaeus, think that the inferior world is to last six thousand years, the heaven fifty thousand years, God being about to make a new world and heaven. This, they say, Adam handed on to Seth, he to Henoch, Henoch to Noe, he to Sem, he to Heber and to the Patriarchs of the Hebrews; afterwards it was confirmed to them by Moses, and is signified by those divine six days of creation which represent six thousand years, because the Psalmist also says: A day of the Lord is a thousand years; a thousand years in thy sight are as one day. Thus he, the Conciliator, p. 39. But such was the acumen of Manasseh, that he seeks mysteries in the six days of creation, and they believe who answer with six millenary days, in which this inferior world ought to last. On the first day, says he, Problematum, p. 46, light was made, and darkness came forth: this answers to Adam, who was the light of the world, and to Cain as the symbol of darkness; or to Adam innocent, and Adam a sinner; or to Seth and Enos, in whose time the darkness of idolatry began. On the second day the firmament was expanded, dividing the waters from the waters, which answers to Noe in the second millennium, who by the waters of the deluge divided between the good and the wicked. On the third day the earth emerged from the waters, and plants were created, which answers to the Jewish people in the third millennium, emerging from the Egyptian captivity, and flourishing as the tree of the law.

On the fourth day were created the two great lights: these designate the two temples founded in the fourth millennium. On the fifth day birds and fishes were created; they represent the Israelites who, after the destruction of the temple, at the beginning of the fifth millennium, in the greatest multitude, like fishes, occupied the land of Israel, and the Roman Eagles, birds which also invaded the land of Israel. On the sixth day were created quadrupeds and man, by whom are designated the princes and kings who in the sixth millennium are to be freed from the yoke of the Roman empire, and the Messiah, man, of whom Adam was the type. Inasmuch as He shall not otherwise than did Adam of old rule over all fishes, birds, and quadrupeds, by which all the princes of the world are figured. Finally, on the seventh day there was rest, because in the seventh millennium there will be rest, and the chaos, fertile through the continual germination of six millennia, will cease to germinate. Such are his words.