Chapter II: All the material beings that God has created have reference to man, as the compendium and the head of the world of bodies

If this proposition is true, it suffices to demolish radically the gigantic edifice of the pre-Genesis world and of the indefinite intervals which would have preceded the creation of man. But this capital fact is demonstrated philosophically and theologically to the point of evidence.

It is an axiom accepted by all Christian philosophers and even by the sages of paganism—Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, etc.—that God is himself the exemplar and final cause of all his external operations; and that he loves himself with such a love that all his works tend to proclaim his ineffable perfections. Saint Thomas, after having summarized Aristotle’s doctrine on this subject, posed to himself this double

question: “Is there another exemplar cause of things, and another final cause than God?—No, he answers, God is the first exemplar cause and the final cause of all beings.¹”

In support of the metaphysical considerations which he develops in order to prove his thesis, he invokes this passage from Proverbs: “The Lord has made all things for himself,²” that is, for his glory. It follows from this that all the works of God must reproduce his image and procure his glory. Now, we see this image, this divine likeness, appear nowhere in inanimate creatures and in animals. What are minerals, plants, animals? A mere indication of the power and wisdom of the Creator; but one could not say, without falling into absurdity, that they reflect the image and likeness of God. They can therefore be attached to God, and fulfill their destiny, only through the ministry of man, who, by his mixed nature, unites matter and spirit in himself, and in whom the divine image and likeness shine.

Irrational creatures must also procure the glory of God, that is, according to the language of the School, his external glory. We read, indeed, frequently in the Holy Scriptures, that these creatures proclaim the glory of God: “The heavens recount the glory of God.³” “I shall be glorified by the beast of the fields.⁴” “For the invisible perfections of God, as well as his eternal power and his divinity, have become visible since the creation of the world, through all that has been made; so that they are inexcusable, because, having known God, they did not glorify him as God.⁵” But this glory, irrational creatures can procure for God only by manifesting to the eyes of man his attributes, the knowledge of which leads man to glorify his Creator. Man alone can therefore attain this end of creation; he alone can raise to the Creator his homages, and those of the whole material creation.

Is this not what the order of creation loudly proclaims? The earth is created first, as the habitation of all the beings which are to people the

world; then comes light and with it the heat, electricity, and atmosphere necessary for the life of its guests. The earth being thus prepared, plants are seen to arise to serve as nourishment for the animals, which are created in their turn on the fifth day. But why this earth, these plants, these animals, this light, these stars? For what needs did these immense forests grow? For whom these majestic shades? For whom these sublime spectacles? What mysterious beings contemplated these marvels? All these questions remain insoluble for our adversaries, and their powerless reason plunges into an abyss and falls silent before them.

Indeed, who would dare to say that these material beings existed for themselves? Who would dare to believe that an infinitely wise and infinitely powerful God would have proposed to himself as an end, in the manifestation of this wisdom and this power, coarse, transitory, perishable beings, which are ignorant of themselves, and whose existence bears no proportion to the end which an infinite intelligence must necessarily propose to itself? No, such a supposition is condemned by common sense. Another being was required to explain—one might almost add, to justify—the appearance of all the others, and to connect the material world to the spiritual world, creation to the Creator.

Everything, therefore, was created for man: the earth, the air, and the light for the plants; the plants for the animals; and the whole for man, who by his double

nature serves as a bond of union between the creatures and the Creator. This is their end, their destiny.

This supreme investiture, as king and pontiff of the world, God conferred upon man when he said: “Let us make man to our image and to our likeness, and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the animals, and over the whole earth, and over all the reptiles that move upon the earth;⁶” then, after having realized his admirable designs, he said to our first parents: “Behold, I have given you all the plants spread over the surface of the earth and which bear their seed, and all the fruit trees which have their germ within themselves, to serve for your nourishment; and I have given their pasture to all the animals of the earth, to all the birds of the heavens, to everything that lives and moves upon the earth.⁷”

This thought of God in creation, the Sage recalls to us when he says, addressing the Lord:

“You have formed man by your wisdom, so that he might have dominion over the creatures which you have made and that he might direct the universe in equity and in justice; and that he might render judgments in uprightness of heart.⁸” “What is man?” exclaims the Psalmist; “you have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things beneath his feet.⁹”

The whole magnificent plan of eternal wisdom, when it deigns to manifest itself outside itself, is there: God creating everything for his glory: Universa propter semetipsum operatus est Dominus [The Lord has wrought all things for himself]; irrational creatures destined to prove it by manifesting his adorable power and wisdom; then man, an intelligence incomparably superior to matter, charged with bearing to the foot of the throne of the Most High the homages of the creatures incapable of doing so. Saint Paul summarized this admirable divine synthesis in these words: “For all things are yours, whether the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things future; but you, you are Jesus Christ’s, and Jesus Christ is God’s.¹⁰”

Nothing is more expressive than the language of the Fathers

and of the interpreters in this place. Saint Ambrose observes that it is with reason that man was created last, as one who was to be the king of creation: “It was just,” he says, “that man should be created in the last place, as being the compendium of all the other works, the cause of the world, the one for whom all things were made, as one who was to inhabit all the elements.¹¹”

Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, says: “God created all the things which previously did not exist, in order to make his greatness known and understood through his works.¹²”

To those who ask whether God has need of the homages of man, Saint Jerome replies: “God has no need of the praises of anyone whatsoever; but these praises are useful to those who address them to him; and while they recognize in each of his works his majesty and his greatness, a thousand astonishing marvels burst forth on all sides to praise him.¹³”

Why was man created last? Saint Gregory of Nazianzus asks himself? “No one ought to be astonished,” he answers, “that man was created last, by the very hand of God and shining with his image. Was it not necessary first to prepare a dwelling worthy of him, for this king of creation, and then to introduce him into it surrounded by his guards of honor?¹⁴”

Let us listen again to Lactantius: “I shall show why God made man. Just as he fashioned the world for man, so he made man for himself, as the Pontiff of the divine temple, as the spectator of his works and of celestial things.¹⁵”

Finally, Cornelius a Lapide summarizes in these terms the thought of the Fathers whom we have already cited: “Man is the end, the compendium, the bond, and the knot of the

world which God created, for he possesses and unites in himself all the degrees of spiritual and corporeal beings; this is why he is indeed a little world, as he is called. Plato also calls him the horizon of the universe, because he determines and gathers in himself the upper hemisphere, in other terms, heaven and the angels, and the lower hemisphere, in other terms, the earth and the brutes. Indeed, man resembles the angels on one side, and the brutes on one side.¹⁶”

Thus, therefore, it remains demonstrated by the whole Christian tradition, and even by reason, that material beings were created so that, through them, man might rise to knowledge of the Creator, of his greatness, of his power, of his goodness, so that, in knowing him, he might admire him, love him, bless him, serve him, glorify him—the sole end which God proposed to himself in all his creative operations: Universa propter semetipsum operatus est Dominus [The Lord has wrought all things for himself].¹⁷ And from that point, what becomes of these fantastic worlds created by the imagination in the vain hope of finding in them the solution to the difficulties which one encounters in the study of the phenomena of

nature? “Castles in the air,” says Cuvier, “which disappear like vain appearances.¹⁸”

Moreover, why be astonished at these difficulties, when science presents so many others which, despite all its efforts, it will never resolve? “The objections heaped up against Moses,” says de Maistre, “have disappeared before true science; but those were greatly wise who scorned them before any examination, or who examined them only to find the answer, but without doubting for an instant that there was one.¹⁹”

Let us end this chapter with this question which Saint Thomas posed to himself, and which summarizes well what we have just said: he asked himself whether God had created several worlds? “No,” he answers, “because Scripture makes mention only of one world: Mundus per ipsum factus est [The world was made through him], says Saint John, and not mundi [worlds];” and the reason which the Angelic Doctor gives for it is that, all things having to be regulated in a single order, and to tend toward the same end, the world must be one. “This is why,” he adds, “Aristotle, in his twelfth Metaphysics (text 52), concludes from the unity of the order existing in things to the unity of God who governs them; and Plato, in his Timaeus, proves the unity of the world, as image, by the unity of the exemplar which is God.²⁰”