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| Chapter LXXXIV
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Chapter
LXXXIV.
And since he asserts that, “when ants die,
the survivors set apart a special place (for their interment), and that
their ancestral sepulchres such a place is,” we have to answer,
that the greater the laudations which he heaps upon irrational animals,
so much the more does he magnify (although against his will) the work
of that reason which arranged all things in order, and points out the
skill4017
which exists among men, and which is capable
of adorning by its reason even the gifts which are bestowed by nature
on the irrational creation. But why do I say
“irrational,” since Celsus is of opinion that these
animals, which, agreeably to the common ideas of all men, are termed
irrational, are not really so? Nor does he regard the ants
as devoid of reason, who professed to speak of “universal
nature,” and who boasted of his truthfulness in the inscription
of his book. For, speaking of the ants conversing with one
another, he uses the following language: “And when they
meet one another they
enter into conversation, for which reason they never mistake their way;
consequently they possess a full endowment of reason, and some common
ideas on certain general subjects, and a voice by which they express
themselves regarding accidental things.”4018
| 4018 οὐκοῦν καὶ
λόγου
συμπλήρωσίς
ἐστι παρ᾽
αὐτοῖς, καὶ
κοιναὶ
ἔννοιαι
καθολικῶν
τινων, καὶ
φωνὴ, καὶ
τυγχάνοντα
σημαινόμενα. | Now conversation between one man and
another is carried on by means of a voice, which gives expression to
the meaning intended, and which also gives utterances concerning what
are called “accidental things;” but to say that this was
the case with ants would be a most ridiculous
assertion.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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