על בריאת העולם כ״אOn the Account of the World's Creation 21
א׳
1[64] Water and air having now duly received as a sort of lot of their own the living creatures appropriate to them, He again called upon the earth for the production of the portion that had been left out. When the plants had been created the land-animals had been wanting. So He saith “Let the earth bring forth cattle and wild beasts and creeping things after each kind” (Gen. 1:24). The earth forthwith puts forth, as it was bidden, creatures all differing in build and in the varying strength and capacity to hurt or to serve that was inherent in them.
ב׳
2[65] To crown all he made man, in what way I will say presently, when I have first pointed out the exceeding beauty of the chain of sequence which Moses has employed in setting forth the bringing in of life. For of the forms of animal life, the least elaborately wrought has been allotted to the race of fish; that worked out in greatest detail and best in all respects to mankind;
ג׳
3[66] that which lies between these two to creatures that tread the earth and travel in the air. For the principle of life in these is endowed with perceptions keener than that in fishes, but less keen than that in men. Wherefore, of the creatures that have life, fishes were the first which he brought into being, creatures in whose being the body predominates over the soul or life-principle. They are in a way animals and not animals; lifeless beings with the power of movement. The seed of the principle of life has been sown in them adventitiously, with a view only to the perpetuation of their bodies, just as salt (we are told) is added to flesh that it may not easily decay.
ד׳
4After the fishes He made the birds and land-creatures; for, when we come to these, we find them with keener senses and manifesting by their structure far more clearly all the qualities proper to beings endowed with the life-principle.
ה׳
5To crown all, as we have said before, He made man, and bestowed on him mind par excellence, life-principle of the life-principle itself, like the pupil in the eye: for of this too those who investigate more closely than others the nature of things say that it is the eye of the eye.