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The City of God

Chapter 10.--Of the Falseness of the History Which Allots Many Thousand Years to the World's Past.

Let us, then, omit the conjectures of men who know not what they say, when they speak of the nature and origin of the human race. For some hold the same opinion regarding men that they hold regarding the world itself, that they have always been. Thus Apuleius says when he is describing our race, "Individually they are mortal, but collectively, and as a race, they are immortal." ¹ And when they are asked, how, if the human race has always been, they vindicate the truth of their history, which narrates who were the inventors, and what they invented, and who first instituted the liberal studies and the other arts, and who first inhabited this or that region, and this or that island? they reply, ² that most, if not all lands, were so desolated at intervals by fire and flood, that men were greatly reduced in numbers, and from these, again, the population was restored to its former numbers, and that thus there was at intervals a new beginning made, and though those things which had been interrupted and checked by the severe devastations were only renewed, yet they seemed to be originated then; but that man could not exist at all save as produced by man. But they say what they think, not what they know.

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De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput X: De opinione eorum, qui humanum genus sicut ipsum mundum semper fuisse existimant.

Omittamus igitur coniecturas hominum nescientium quid loquantur de natura uel institutione generis humani. alii namque, sicut de ipso mundo crediderunt, semper fuisse homines opinantur. unde et ait Apuleius, cum hoc animantium genus describeret: singillatim mortales, cuncti tamen uniuerso genere perpetui. et cum illis dictum fuerit, si semper fuit humanum genus, quonam modo uerum eorum loquatur historia narrans qui fuerint quarumque rerum inuentores, qui primi liberalium disciplinarum aliarumque artium institutores, uel a quibus primum illa uel illa regio parsque terrarum, illa atque illa insula incoli coeperit, respondent diluuiis et conflagrationibus per certa interualla temporum non quidem omnia, sed plurima terrarum ita uastari, ut redigantur homines ad exiguam paucitatem, ex quorum progenie rursus multitudo pristina reparetur; ac sic identidem reperiri et institui quasi prima, cum restituantur potius, quae fuerant illis nimiis uastationibus interrupta et extincta; ceterum hominem nisi ex homine existere omnino non posse. dicunt autem quod putant, non quod sciunt.