Laudator Temporis Acti

Augustine, Sermons 361.11 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 39, cols. 1604-1605; tr. Edmund Hill):

Where, after all, does the earth get its richness from, if not from the rotting of earthy things? Those who cultivate the countryside are well aware of this; and those who don't, because they always live in town, should certainly know, from the gardens near the town, with what diligent care the worthless off-scourings of the city are kept, by whom they are even bought for a price, where they are carried to. Certainly all this could be thought by people with no experience to be worthless rubbish, void of any further use. And is anyone ready to spare a glance for a lump of dung? What people shrink from glancing at, they take great care to save.

So what seemed to have been already used up and thrown away goes back into the richness of the earth, the richness into sap, the sap into the root. And what passes from the earth into the root wanders up by invisible channels into the trunk, is distributed through the branches, passes from the branches into the seeds, from seed into fruit and leaves. There you are—what you shuddered at in the putrefaction of dung, you admire in the fruit and the greenery of the tree.

Unde enim terra pinguificatur, nisi de putredine terrenorum? Attendunt haec qui agrum colunt; et qui non colunt, quia in urbe semper vivunt, de hortis certe vicinis urbi cognoscant contemptibilia quaeque purgamenta civitatis quibus studiis serventur, a quibus etiam pretio comparentur, quo portentur. Certe iam contemptibilia, exinanita omni utilitate, ab inexpertis possent putari. Et quis dignatur stercus intueri? Quod intueri homo horret, servare curat.

Illud ergo quod consumptum iam et abiectum videbatur, redit in pinguedinem terrae, pinguedo in succum, succus in radicem; et quod de terra in radicem transit, invisibilibus accessibus migrat in robur, distribuitur per ramos, a ramis in germina, a germine in fructus et folia. Ecce quod horrebas in putredine stercoris, in arboris fecunditate et viriditate miraris.