[150] What has been said about the words, “The charge to which abandonment exposes me is too great,” must suffice, and we must consider the words that follow. “If” he says “Thou castest me out to-day from the face of the earth, from Thy face also shall I be hidden” (Gen. 4:14). What are you saying, good sir? If you shall have been cast out of all the earth, will you still hide yourself? How?
[151] Could you live? Or did you not know that nature has not given to all living creatures the same abiding-place, but different ones, the sea to fish and all the watery tribe, and earth to all land creatures? And man, so far at all events as the constituents of his body go, is a land creature. For this reason, each living creature, when he leaves his proper abode and enters so to speak a foreign one, dies without more ado, the land creatures on going under water, the aquatic animals on making their way to dry land.
[152] If, therefore, being a man, you should be cast out from earth, whither will you turn? Will you take on the nature of aquatic creatures and swim under water? Nay, under water you will be dead in a moment. But perhaps you will take wings and raise yourself aloft and elect to traverse the air, transforming land-kind into bird-kind? Aye, change if you can the moulding and stamp of the Divine coinage. You will never be able to do that: for the further you lift yourself aloft, so much the more swiftly will you be borne from a higher region with greater impetus to earth, your proper quarter.