threatened by Manichæus for breaking the symbol.  Strange customs, and strange harmless- ness! 59.  Now, as regards killing animals, and the reasons for your opinion, much that has been said will apply also to this.  For what harm will be done to the soul of a wolf by killing the wolf, since the wolf, as long as it lives, will be a wolf, and will not listen to any preacher, or give up, in the least, shedding the blood of sheep; and, by killing it, the rational soul, as you think, will be set free from its confinement in the body?  But you make this slaughter unlawful even for your followers; for you think it worse than that of trees.  And in this there is not much fault to be found with your senses,—that is, your bodily senses.  For we see and hear by their cries that animals die with pain, although man disregards this in a beast, with which, as not having a rational soul, we have no community of rights.  But as to your senses in the observation of trees, you must be entirely blind.  For not to mention that there are no movements in the wood expressive of pain, what is clearer than that a tree is never better than when it is green and flourishing, gay with flowers, and rich in fruit?  And this comes generally and chiefly from pruning.  But if it felt the iron, as you suppose, it ought to die of wounds so many, so severe, instead of sprouting at the places, and reviving with such manifest delight. 60.  But why do you think it a greater crime to destroy animals than plants, although you hold that plants have a purer soul than animals?  There is a compensation, we are told, when part of what is taken from the fields is given to the elect and the saints to be purified.  This has already been refuted; and it has, I think, been proved sufficiently that there is no reason for saying that more of the good part is found in vegetables than in flesh.  But should any one support himself by selling butcher-meat, and spend the whole profit of his business in purchasing food for your elect, and bring larger supplies for those saints than any peasant or farmer, will he not plead this compensation as a warrant for his killing animals?  But there is, we are told, some other mysterious reason; for a cunning man can always find some resource in the secrets of nature when addressing unlearned people.  The story, then, is that the heavenly princes who were taken from the race of darkness and bound, and have a place assigned them in this region by the Creator of the world, have animals on the earth specially belonging to them, each having those coming from his own stock and class; and they hold the slaughterers of those animals guilty, and do not allow them to leave the earth, but harass them as much as they can with pains and torments.  What simple man will not be frightened by this, and, seeing nothing in the darkness shrouding these things, will not think that the fact is as described?  But I will hold to my purpose, with God’s help, to rebut mysterious falsehood by the plainest truth. 61.  Tell me, then, if animals on land and in water come in regular succession by ordinary generation from this race of princes, since the origin of animal life is traced to the abortive births in that race;—tell me, I say, whether bees and frogs, and many other creatures not 147 Description of the Symbol of the Hands Among the Manichæans.