Hexaemeron 6

And God said, Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls according to their kind, and birds flying according to the firmament of heaven according to their kind.

After the creation of the luminaries, the waters too are now filled with living creatures, so that this region also might be adorned.

For the earth had received its adornment from its own growths;

and the heaven had received the flowers of the stars, and was adorned, as with the beams of twin eyes, by the pairing of the two great luminaries.

It remained that to the waters also their proper adornment should be rendered.

The command came, and at once both the rivers became productive and the lakes fruitful, each of them yielding its own kinds according to nature.

And the sea travailed with all manner of kinds of swimming things, and not even so much of the water as lay in the mud and marshes—not even this remained idle or without share in the perfecting of creation.

For frogs and gnats and mosquitoes were evidently seething forth from them.

For the things still even now seen are a proof of those things past.

Thus every water hastened to minister to the creative command;

and of those whose kinds no one could even number, the great and ineffable power of God at once displayed life active and moving, that aptitude for generating life having been implanted in the waters together with the command.

Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls.

Now for the first time an animate creature, partaking of sensation, is made.

For plants and trees, though they may be said to live because they partake of the nutritive and growth-producing power, are nevertheless not animals, nor animate.

For this very reason: Let the waters bring forth creeping things.

Everything that swims, whether it floats on the surface of the water or cleaves the water through the depths, is of the nature of creeping things, since it is drawn along by the body of the water.

And even if some of the aquatic creatures happen to have feet and to walk (indeed most of these are amphibious;

such as seals, and crocodiles, and river-horses [hippopotami], and frogs, and crabs), yet they still have swimming as their predominant trait.

Therefore: Let the waters bring forth creeping things.

In these few words, what kind is omitted? what is not comprehended in the command of creation? Not the live-bearers, such as seals and dolphins and electric rays, and the like, the so-called cartilaginous fish? not the egg-layers, which are nearly all the kinds of fish? not all that are scaly, all that are plated, those that have fins and those that have none? The voice of the command is small—rather, not even a voice, but only an inclination and impulse of the will;

but the fruitfulness of the meaning in the command is as great as are the differences and the common features of the fishes—to go through all of which with exactness is the same as to count the waves of the deep, or to attempt to measure out the water of the sea with cups.

Let the waters bring forth creeping things.

In these are included the open-sea fish, the shore-fish, the deep-water fish, the rock-fish, the gregarious, the solitary, the sea-monsters, the huge, and the very smallest of fishes.

For by the same power, and by an equal command, both the great and the small partake of being.

He has shown you the natural kinship of swimming creatures with water, for which reason fishes, when separated from water for a little, perish.

For neither do they have respiration so as to draw in this air of ours;

but what air is to land creatures, that water is to the swimming kind.

The reason is that in us a lung is set, an organ rare in texture and full of passages, which, receiving the air through the expansion of the chest, fans and cools the heat within us;

but in them, the expansion and folding of the gills, which receive the water and let it pass through, fulfills the function of respiration.

Peculiar is the lot of fishes, peculiar their nature, separate their mode of life, distinctive their manner of living.

For this reason none of the swimming creatures admits of being tamed, nor does it endure at all the laying on of a human hand.

Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls according to their kind.

He commands that the first-fruits of each kind now be brought forth, like certain seeds of nature;

but their multitude is stored up in the succession that comes after, when they need to increase and multiply.

Of another kind are those called shell-fish (testaceans);

such as cockles, and scallops, and sea snails, and whelks, and the countless varieties of oysters.

Again, another kind besides these is that called the soft-shelled (crustaceans), crayfish, and crabs, and things similar to these.

Yet another kind beyond these is what is called the molluscs, whose flesh is soft and spongy;

octopuses, and cuttlefish, and the like.

And in these again there are countless differences.

For sea-serpents and morays and eels, which arise in the muddy rivers and lakes, in the likeness of their nature draw nearer to the venomous reptiles than to fishes.

Another kind is that of the egg-layers, and another that of the live-bearers.

Live-bearing are the dogfish kind, and the small sharks, and in short the so-called cartilaginous fish.

And of the sea-monsters [cetaceans] most are live-bearing;

dolphins and seals, which, it is said, even take their young back into their belly and enclose them again when they are still small and have been frightened by some cause.

Let the waters bring forth according to their kind.

One kind is the cetacean, and another the kind of the small fishes.

Again, among the fishes there are countless differences distinguished by kinds;

of which there are also distinctive names, and varied diet, and shape and size and qualities of flesh—all separated from one another by very great differences, and established in different and yet other species.

What tunny-watchers, then, can enumerate for us the differences of the kinds? And yet they say that these men even report the number of fish in great shoals.

And who of those who have grown old around shores and headlands is able to make known to us the history of them all with exactness? Some things those who fish the Indian Sea know;

others, those who hunt in the Egyptian gulf;

but all alike, both small and great, that first command and that ineffable power brought into being.

Many are the variations of their lives;

many also the differences concerning the successions of each kind.

Most of the fishes do not brood over their eggs as birds do, nor build nests, nor with toil rear their own offspring;

but the water, receiving the egg that has been dropped, made it a living creature.

And for each kind the succession is unvarying and unmixed with another nature.

Not like the matings of mules upon the dry land, or of certain birds, which adulterate the kinds.

None among the fishes is armed with teeth only on one half [of the jaw], as the ox and the sheep are among us;

for none of them chews the cud, except the parrot-fish only, as some relate.

But all are thickly set with the sharpest points of teeth, lest by prolonged chewing the food should dissolve away;

for, were it not quickly cut up and passed on to the stomach, it would in the process of being broken small be dispersed by the water.

And the food of fishes is determined differently for different ones according to kind.

For some are nourished on mud;

others are content with the herbs that grow in the water.

But most of the fishes are devourers of one another, and among them the smaller is food for the greater.

And if it ever happens that one which has overcome a smaller one becomes the prey of another, both are brought into the single belly of the last.

What then do we men do otherwise in our oppression of the weaker? How does the man who, in his greedy love of wealth, hides away the weak in the insatiable folds of his covetousness differ from the last fish? That fish had the poor man's substance;

you, having taken him, have made him a part of your abundance.

You have shown yourself more unjust than the unjust, and more grasping than the grasping.

Take care lest the same end as that of the fishes await you—a hook somewhere, or a creel, or a net.

For surely we too, having passed through many unjust deeds, shall not escape the final punishment.

But now, having observed much cunning and treachery even in a weak creature, I wish you to flee the imitation of the malicious.

The crab desires the flesh of the oyster;

but the catch is hard for it because of the enclosure of the shell.

For with an unbreakable barrier nature has secured the softness of the flesh.

Wherefore it has also been named the shell-covered one (testacean).

And since two hollow halves, exactly fitted to one another, fold around and enclose the oyster, of necessity the claws of the crab are useless.

What then does it do? When it sees the oyster basking with pleasure in sheltered spots, and spreading open its valves toward the ray of the sun, then it secretly slips in a pebble, prevents the closing, and is found by its ingenuity to encompass what its strength lacked.

Such is the wickedness of creatures that share in neither reason nor speech.

But I wish you, while emulating the resourcefulness and ingenuity of the crabs, to abstain from harming your neighbors.

Such is the man who comes to his brother by guile, and seizes on the misfortunes of his neighbors, and revels in the calamities of others.

Flee the imitations of the condemned.

Poverty with true self-sufficiency is, for the temperate, preferable to every indulgence.

Nor would I pass over the deceitful and thievish ways of the octopus, which, whatever rock it happens each time to entwine itself about, takes on the color of that rock.

So that most of the fishes, swimming up unwarily, run into the octopus as if into the rock, and become ready prey for the cunning one.

Such in character are those who fawn upon the powers that be at any given time, and who reshape themselves to the needs of the moment, never standing fast on the same purpose, but readily becoming now this, now that—honoring temperance among the temperate, but licentious among the licentious—transferring their opinions to suit each person's pleasure.

Such men it is not easy to avoid, nor to guard against the harm from them, because the wickedness deeply contrived is hidden under the guise of friendship.

Such characters the Lord names ravening wolves, appearing in sheep's clothing.

Flee the manifold and complex ways of such conduct;

but pursue truth, sincerity, simplicity.

For this reason also [the serpent] was condemned to creep.

The righteous man is without guile, such as was Jacob.

Therefore: The Lord settles those of single mind in a house.

This is the great and spacious sea;

there are creeping things innumerable;

but nevertheless there is among them a certain wise and well-ordered arrangement.

For we are not only able to accuse the fishes, but there are things even worthy of imitation.

How is it that each of the kinds of fishes, having apportioned to itself a region suited to it, does not encroach upon the others, but abides within its own bounds? No geometer among them allotted the dwelling-places;

they are not bounded off by walls;

and yet of its own accord what is fitting has been assigned to each.

For this gulf feeds these certain kinds of fishes, and that one others;

and the things that abound here are scarce among others.

No mountain stretched up with sharp peaks separates them, no river cuts off the passage; but there is a certain law of nature which, equally and justly, apportions to each its dwelling according to each one's need.

From where then [comes our own behavior]? We who remove the everlasting boundaries which our fathers set.

We cut off land, we join house to house and field to field, that we may take away something from our neighbor.

The sea-monsters know the manner of life assigned to them by nature; they have taken the sea outside the inhabited regions, the one empty of islands, against which no mainland lies opposite on the far side.

Wherefore it is unnavigable, since neither inquiry nor any need persuades sailors to venture upon it.

The sea-monsters which have occupied that sea, like the greatest of mountains in magnitude, as those who have seen them say, remain within their own bounds, harming neither the islands nor the coastal cities.

Thus then each kind dwells, as in cities or villages or ancient homelands, in the parts of the sea assigned to them.

Already, too, some of the fishes are migratory, and as if from a common council-chamber being sent forth to foreign parts, at a single signal all set off.

For when the appointed season of breeding arrives, others migrating from other gulfs, roused by the common law of nature, hasten to the northern sea.

And you may see, at the time of their ascent, the fishes as it were like a stream, united, flowing through the Propontis toward the Euxine [Black Sea].

Who is it that moves them? what command of a king? what edicts posted up in the marketplace announce the appointed time? who are their guides? Do you see the divine ordinance filling all things, and pervading even through the smallest?

A fish does not contradict the law of God, and we men do not endure the teachings of salvation.

Do not despise the fishes because they are utterly without voice and reason, but fear lest you become even more irrational than they, setting yourself against the ordinance of the Creator.

Hear the fishes all but uttering a voice through the things they do: that for the preservation of the kind we are sent on this long migration.

They do not have a reason of their own, but they have the law of nature firmly implanted, pointing out what must be done.

Let us go, they say, to the northern deep.

For that water is sweeter than the rest of the sea, because the sun, lingering only a little upon it, does not draw off through its ray all of its potability.

And the sea creatures too rejoice in sweet waters;

whence they often swim up into the rivers, and are carried far from the sea.

For this reason the Pontus [Black Sea] is preferable to them above the other gulfs, as being suited for them to spawn in and to rear their offspring.

And when what was striven for has been sufficiently accomplished, again all in a body return home.

And what is the reason? let us hear it from the silent ones.

The northern sea, they say, is shallow and lies open, exposed to the violence of the winds, having few shores and refuges.

Therefore the winds easily turn it up from the bottom, so that even the sand of the depths is mingled with the waves.

But it is also cold, in the winter season, being filled by many and great rivers.

For this reason, having enjoyed it in moderation during the summer, again in winter they hasten to the warmth in the deep and to the sunny places, and fleeing the windy harshness of the north, they harbor in the gulfs that are less tossed.

These things I myself have seen, and I have marveled at the wisdom of God in all.

If the irrational creatures are inventive and protective of their own salvation, and the fish knows what is to be chosen and what to be shunned, what shall we say, who have been honored with reason, instructed by the law, encouraged by promises, made wise by the Spirit, and yet order our own affairs more irrationally than the fishes? Seeing that they at least know how to make some provision for the future, while we, out of hopelessness toward the future, consume our life in cattle-like pleasure.

A fish crosses so many seas in order to find some benefit;

what will you say, you who live together with idleness? And idleness is the beginning of wrongdoing.

Let no one allege ignorance as an excuse.

A natural reason has been sown within us, pointing out our affinity for the good, and our alienation from the harmful.

I do not depart from the examples drawn from the sea, since these are set before us for examination.

I myself heard from one of the coast-dwellers that the sea urchin, that utterly small and contemptible creature, often becomes a teacher of calm and of storm to those who sail.

For when it foresees a disturbance from the winds, it slips beneath some sturdy pebble and, upon it as upon an anchor, rocks securely, held fast by the weight so as not to be easily dragged off by the waves.

When the sailors see this sign, they know the violent movement of the winds that is expected.

No astrologer, no Chaldean, inferring the disturbances of the air from the risings of the stars, taught these things to the sea urchin, but the Lord of sea and winds placed in the little creature also a clear trace of His great wisdom.

Nothing is unprovided for, nothing neglected by God.

The sleepless eye watches over all things.

He is present to all, supplying to each one its salvation.

If God did not leave the sea urchin outside His oversight, does He not oversee your affairs? You husbands, love your wives, even though you have come together from far-apart places for the fellowship of marriage.

Let the bond of nature, the yoke given through the blessing, be a union of those who were separated.

The viper, the most fearsome of the reptiles, comes to mate with the sea moray, and signaling its presence with a hiss, calls her out of the depths to a nuptial embrace.

And she obeys, and is united with the venomous one.

What does my discourse intend? That even if the partner be harsh and savage in character, the wife must bear with her yoke-mate, and on no pretext consent to tear the union apart.

Is he given to drink? But he is united to you by nature.

Is he harsh and ill-tempered? But he is now your member, and the most honorable of your members.

But let the husband too hear the exhortation that befits him.

The viper vomits out its venom, out of reverence for the marriage;

do you not lay aside the harshness and inhumanity of your soul, out of reverence for the union? Or perhaps the example of the viper will be useful to us in another way also: that the coupling of the viper and the moray is a sort of adultery against nature.

Let those, then, who plot against the marriages of others be taught to what sort of reptile they are like.

One aim is mine: that the Church be built up on every side.

Let the passions of the licentious be subdued, instructed by examples both of the land and of the sea.

Here both the weakness of my body and the lateness of the hour compel me to halt my discourse;

since I still had much to add, worthy of wonder, for the eager listeners, concerning the things that grow in the sea:

how water congeals into salt;

how that most precious stone, the coral, is a green plant in the sea, but when it is brought out into the air, hardens into the solidity of stone;

whence nature placed in the most worthless creature, the oyster, the precious pearl.

For the things which the treasuries of kings desire, these are scattered about the shores and headlands and rugged rocks, lying within the casings of the oysters.

Whence do the pinnae feed the golden wool which none of the dyers has yet imitated? Whence do the murex-snails bestow on kings their purple robes, which surpass even the flowers of the meadows in beauty of hue?

And what of the necessary things has not come to be? what of the costly things has not been bestowed upon human life? Some are for the service of men;

others, for the contemplation of the wonder concerning creation.

Others are fearsome, disciplining our slothfulness.

God made the great sea-monsters.

They are called great not because they are bigger than a shrimp or a sprat, but because in the bulk of their body they rival the greatest mountains;

indeed they often give the impression of islands, whenever they swim up to the very surface of the water.

These, however, being so great, do not pass their time around headlands or shores, but inhabit what is called the Atlantic deep.

Such are the creatures fashioned for our fear and astonishment.

But if you hear that the greatest ships, borne with spread sails before a fair wind, are so easily stopped by the tiniest little fish, the remora, that the vessel is kept motionless for a very long time, as if rooted fast in the open sea itself—do you not in this small thing too receive the same demonstration of the Creator's power? For not only swordfish, and sawfish, and dogfish, and whales and hammerhead-sharks are fearsome, but even the sting of the sea-stingray—and that when dead—and the sea-hare are no less fearsome, bringing swift and inexorable destruction.

Thus the Creator wills you to be watchful through all things, that in your hope toward God you may escape the harms that come from them.

But now, having come up from the depths, let us take refuge upon the dry land.

For somehow the wonders of creation, overtaking us one after another like so many waves, with their continuous and successive onsets have drawn our discourse under water.

And yet I would marvel if our mind, upon encountering the still greater marvels on the land, does not again flee back to the sea like Jonah.

And it seems to me that my discourse, having fallen in among the countless wonders, has forgotten due measure, and has suffered the same thing as those who sail upon the open sea, who, gauging their motion against nothing fixed, are often ignorant of how far they have run.

Which indeed seems to have happened to us also: as the discourse ran on through creation, it failed to perceive the multitude of the things that had been said.

But even if this august assembly is eager to listen, and the narration of the Master's wonders is sweet to the ears of His servants, let us here bring our discourse to anchor, and reserve the day for rendering an account of what remains.

And let us all, rising up, give thanks for the things that have been said, and ask for the fulfillment of what remains.

And may there be for you, even at the partaking of your food, table-talk of all that the discourse brought before you both at morning and at evening;

and being overtaken by sleep amid your reflections upon these things, may you, even while sleeping, enjoy the gladness of the daytime, so that it may be granted you to say: I sleep, but my heart is awake, meditating night and day on the law of the Lord, to whom be glory and might unto the ages of ages.