2. Well, he proceeds to blame us at great length for alleging that God has made all things for man. And, drawing on the stories of animals and the sagacity they show, he wishes to prove that everything exists no more for the sake of men than for the sake of the irrational creatures. Here he seems to me to talk like those men who from hatred of the people they dislike, blame them for the very qualities for which their own friends are praised. For as enmity so blinds these men that they are not aware of accusing their friends when they think they are abusing their enemies: the same way, Celsus in this confusion of thought has not seen that he is blaming the Philosophers of the Porch, inasmuch as not unwisely they give man the first place, and in |114 general prefer rational nature to all irrational beings, and maintain that for the sake of the rational creation chiefly, Providence has made everything. And rational creatures, inasmuch as they are the leading objects of Providence, are regarded as children begotten; but irrational and lifeless creatures are like the after-birth. I moreover think that as in our towns the inspectors of provisions and of the market exercise their office only for the sake of men, but even dogs and other irrational creatures enjoy the abundance as well: so Providence chiefly provides for the rational creatures, but it follows also that the irrational creatures enjoy what exists for the sake of men. And as a man is in error if he says that the clerks of the markets provide no more for men than dogs, for that the dogs as well as men enjoy the abundance of what is on sale: so Celsus and they who are of his mind are much more guilty of impiety towards God, "Who provides for the rational creatures; for they pretend to ask. "What more is done for man's support than for plants, and trees, and roots, and thorns?"