17. But we must add a few remarks, out of many, in answer to the foregoing, for we wish to utterly refute the false opinions of Celsus and prove his ingratitude to his Maker; for Celsus, being a man, and being in honour, understandeth not; wherefore, he is not even like the birds and other irrational creatures which he considers to have the gift of divination; but yielding them the preeminence, he goes further than the Egyptians, who worship the irrational creatures as gods, and places himself, and, so far as he can, the whole human race, beneath the irrational creatures, for he believes that men have lower and meaner conceptions of God. Let our inquiry, then, be chiefly directed to the point whether there really is, or is not, an art of divination by birds, and the other animals believed to be "divining," for both ways the argument is to be treated with respect; on the one hand, it presses us not to accept any such thing as divination, lest the rational creatures should forsake the oracles of demons and resort to birds; on the other hand, it brings much clear evidence to show that many people have been preserved from the greatest dangers because they believed in divination by birds. For our present purpose let us allow that augury is a reality: my object is to show any persons who are prepossessed in its favour, that even if this is conceded, the superiority of man over the irrational creatures, and over the very creatures with powers of divination, is incomparably great. Let me then say that even though there were in them a Divine nature capable of predicting the future, and so passing rich, that out of its superfluity it could disclose the future to any man who |129 wished to know it, we must suppose that these creatures would much sooner know their own affairs. But if they knew their own affairs they would have taken care not to fly to any place where men set snares and nets to catch them, or archers make them a target and shoot them on the wing. And certainly, if eagles knew beforehand the designs upon their young ones, whether of serpents climbing to them and killing them, or of men trying to take them either for sport or to serve some other purpose, they would not have made their nests where they were likely to be exposed to these attacks; and, in general, not a single living creature could ever have been captured by men, inasmuch as it was more Divine and wiser than men.