Laudator Temporis Acti

Basil of Caesarea, Letters 16 (tr. Agnes Clare Way, with her note):

Against Eunomius, the Heretic¹

He who says that it is possible to attain to a knowledge of things really existing has, no doubt, directed his process of thought by some method and orderly procedure having its inception in his actual knowledge of existing things, and, after he has trained himself by the comprehension of objects rather insignificant and easily understood, he has simply advanced his perceptive faculty to the apprehension of that which is beyond all understanding.

Let him, therefore, who boasts that he has arrived at a knowledge of things actually existing explain the nature of the most trifling of visible objects. Let him expound the nature of the ant. Is its life sustained by breath and respiration? Is its body provided with bones? Is its framework braced with sinews and ligaments? Is the position of the sinews held secure by the covering of muscles and glands? Is the marrow stretched along the spinal vertebrae from the front of the head to the tail? Does it give the stimulating force to the members which have motion by its covering of sinewy membrane? Does it have a liver and a gall bladder near the liver; also kidneys, a heart, arteries and veins, membranes and cartilage? Is it hairless or covered with hair? Has it an uncloven hoof, or feet divided into toes? How long does it live? What is its manner of reproduction? How long is the period of gestation? And how is it that all ants are not merely crawling insects, nor all winged, but some belong to those which travel on the ground and others fly through the air? To begin with, therefore, let him who boasts of the knowledge of things actually existing explain the nature of the ant. Then let him investigate in the same manner the nature of the power which surpasses every intellect. But, if you have not yet, by your investigation, understood the nature of the smallest ant, how can you boast that the incomprehensible power of God is clear to your mind?

1 Eunomius was the hishop of Cyzicus against whose Liber Apologeticus St. Basil wrote his Adversus Eunomium. However, this letter is similar almost word for word to a passage in the tenth book of St. Gregory of Nyssa's treatise against Eunomius written in 380 or 381. F. Diekamp, 'Ein angehlicher Brief des hl. Basilius gegen Eunomius,' Theologische Quartalschrift 77 (1895) 277-285, considers it the work of St. Gregory. Bessières, op. cit. 349, also thinks that it is not by St. Basil.

Bessières = Marius Bessières, "La Tradition de la Correspondance de St. Basile," Journal of Theological Studies 21 (1920) 1-50, 289-310; 22 (1921) 105-137; 23 (1922) 337-358.

E.O. Wilson would have liked this letter, I think.