Poisonous plants and the purpose of all creation

What shall I say? What shall I pass over in silence? In the rich treasuries of creation, the discovery of the more valuable thing is difficult, and most grievous is the loss of what has been set before us. "Let the earth sprout the herb of grass" (Genesis 1:11). And immediately the poisons were sent out together with the nourishing plants: with the grain, hemlock; with the other foods, hellebore, and aconite, and mandrake, and the juice of the poppy. What then? Shall we abandon giving thanks for the useful things and accuse the Creator for the things that destroy our life? And shall we not reckon this: that not all things have been created for the sake of our stomach? But the foods assigned to us are ready at hand and easily recognized by all; yet each of the things that came into being fulfills its own particular purpose in creation. For since bull's blood is poison to you, was it necessary for this reason either that the bull not be created, or that it be created without blood—whose strength our life needs for so many purposes? But the reason that dwells with you is sufficient for guarding against destructive things. For surely sheep and goats know how to flee from what harms their life, distinguishing what is harmful by sense perception alone; but for you, who have reason at hand, and the medical art supplying what is useful, and the experience of those who came before suggesting flight from harmful things—tell me, is it difficult to avoid poisons? And none of these things has come into being idly, none uselessly. For either it provides food for some of the brute animals, or it has been discovered by the medical art for our own relief from certain illnesses. For starlings feed on hemlock, escaping the harm of the poison through the construction of their bodies. Since they have narrow passages around the heart, they digest what they have swallowed before the chill from it can seize their vital parts. Hellebore is food for quails, which escape the harm by the peculiarity of their constitution. And these very things are also useful to us at times. For through mandrake doctors induce sleep; and with opium they lull the violent pains of the body. Some have already withered the rabid frenzy of appetites with hemlock; and with hellebore they have pried out many chronic afflictions. So what you thought you had as an accusation against the Creator has turned around for you into an increase of thanksgiving.

"Let the earth sprout the herb of grass" (Genesis 1:11). How much spontaneous food he speaks of in these words—the food in roots, and in the herb itself, and already in fruits? And how much that comes to us from care and farming? He did not command seed and fruit to be produced immediately, but the earth to sprout and grow green, and then to be perfected into seed, so that that first command might become a teacher to nature for the sequence that followed. How then, someone says, does the earth bring forth seeds according to kind, when we often sow wheat and harvest this black wheat? But this is not a change to another kind, but a kind of disease and weakness of the seed. For it has not put off being wheat, but has been blackened through scorching, as one can learn from the very name.