 Since we have completed stating the way things appear to us about the divine things, it remains to speak about animal nature, omitting nothing in our power, whether of less or greater esteem. For even in the study of animals disagreeable to perception, the nature that crafted them likewise provides extraordinary pleasures to those able to know their causes and who are by nature philosophers. Surely it would be unreasonable, even absurd, for us to enjoy studying likenesses of animals—on the ground that we are at the same time studying the art, such as painting and sculpture, that made them—while not prizing even more the study of things constituted by nature, at least when we can behold their causes.