this too is doubted, every one allows that beetles, at least, are bred in the ball of mud which they make and bury.184  You ought therefore to consider these animals, and others that it would be tedious to specify, more unclean than your lice; and yet you think it sinful to kill them, though it would be foolish not to kill the lice.  Perhaps you hold the lice cheap because they are small.  But if an animal is to be valued by its size, you must prefer a camel to a man. 64.  Here we may use the gradation which often perplexed us when we were your follow- ers.  For if a flea may be killed on account of its small size, so may the fly which is bred in beans.  And if this, so also may one of a little larger size, for its size at birth is even less.  Then again, a bee may be killed, for its young is no larger than a fly.  So on to the young of a locust, and to a locust; and then to the young of a mouse, and to a mouse.  And, to cut short, it is clear we may come at last to an elephant; so that one who thinks it no sin to kill a flea, because of its small size, must allow that it would be no sin in him to kill this huge creature.  But I think enough has been said of these absurdities. 184 V. Retract. i. 7. § 6, where Augustin allows that this is doubtful, and that many have not even heard of it. 149 Description of the Symbol of the Hands Among the Manichæans.