About the Author

Saint Augustine, more fully introduced above, had interests beyond engaging with the Manichees as seen earlier. Augustine’s interests in philosophy were wide. Like his Platonist teachers, Augustine recognized nature as a hierarchical structure. In this passage from On Marriage and Concupiscence, Saint Augustine considers what we can learn from the fact that many animals form pairs for the purpose of procreation.

Saint Augustine on the Birds (and the Bees)

The union, then, of male and female for the purpose of procreation is the natural good of marriage. But he makes a bad use of this good who uses it bestially, so that his intention is on the gratification of lust, intend of the desire of offspring. Nevertheless, in sundry animals unendowed with reason, as, for instance, in most birds, there is both preserved a certain kind of confederation of pairs, and a social combination of skill in nest-building; and their mutual division of the periods for cherishing their eggs and their alternation in the labor of feeding their young, give them the appearance of so acting, when they mate, as to be intent rather on securing the continuance of their kind than on gratifying lust. Of these two, the one is the likeness of man in a brute; the other, the likeness of the brute in man. With respect, however, to what I ascribed to the nature of marriage, that the male and the female are united together as associates for procreation, and consequently do not defraud each other … although even men without faith possess this palpable blessing of nature, yet, since they use it not in faith, they only turn it to evil and sin.

(Adapted from the Peter Holmes, Robert Ernest Wallace and Benjamin B. Warfield translation)