The various kinds of fishes, birds and land-animals do not give grounds for charging Nature of inviting us to pleasure, but they constitute a severe censure on our want of restraint. For to secure the completeness of the universe and that the cosmic order should exist in every part it was necessary that the different kinds of living animals should arise, but it was not necessary that man the creature most akin to wisdom should be impelled to feast upon them and so change himself into the savagery of wild beasts.
On Providence 77
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