In truth, on this account, we would be right to treat Nature as a very unjust stepmother. But it is not so. We do not live under so misshapen or so lawless a constitution:58 Nature clasps all her creatures in a universal embrace; there is not one of them which she has not plainly furnished with all means necessary to the conservation of its being.
There are commonplace lamentations which I hear men make (as the unruly liberty of their opinions raises them above the clouds and then tumbles them down lower than the Antipodes): We are, they say, the only animal abandoned naked on the naked earth; we are in bonds and fetters, having nothing to arm or cover ourselves with but the pelts of other creatures; Nature has clad all others with shells, pods, husks, hair, wool, spikes, hide, down, feathers, scales, fleece or silk, according to the several necessities of their being; she has armed them with claws, teeth and horns for assault and defence; and, as is proper to them, has herself taught them to swim, to run, to fly or to sing. Man, on the other hand, without an apprenticeship, does not know how to walk, talk, eat or to do anything at all but wail:59
[B] Tum porro puer, ut saevis projectus ab undis
Navita, nudus humi jacet, infans, indigus omni
Vitali auxilio, cum primum in luminis oras
Nixibus ex alvo matris natura profudit;
Vagituque locum lugubri complet, ut aequum est
Cui tantum in vita restet transire malorum.
At variae crescunt pecudes, armenta, feraeque,
Nec crepitacula eis opus est, nec cuiquam adhibenda est
Almae nutricis blanda atque infracta loquella;
Nec varias quaerunt vestes pro tempore coeli;
Denique non armis opus est, non moenibus altis,
Queis sua tutentur, quando omnibus omnia large
Tellus ipsa parit, naturaque deadala rerum.
[Then the child, like a sailor cast up by raging seas, lies naked on the earth, unable to talk, bereft of everything that would help him to live, when Nature first tears him struggling from his mother’s womb and casts him on the shore of light. He fills the place with his mournful cries – rightly, for one who still has to pass through so many evils. Yet all sorts of cattle, farm animals as well as wild beasts, thrive; they need no rattles nor the winsome baby language of the gentle nurse; they do not need clothing varying with the weather; and finally they need no weapons nor lofty walls to make them safe, since Earth herself and skilful Nature give all of them, amply, everything they need.]60
[A] Such plaints are false. There are more uniform relationships and greater fairness in the constitution of this world.61 Our skin, like theirs, is adequately provided with means to resist intemperate weather with firmness: witness those many peoples who have yet to acquire a taste for clothing. [B] Our ancient Gauls wore hardly any clothes: nor do the Irish, our neighbours, under a sky so cold.
[A] But we can judge that from ourselves; all parts of the body which we are pleased to leave uncovered to air and wind prove able to endure it: face, feet, hands, legs, shoulders, head, as custom suggests. If there be a part of us so weak that it does seem that it has to fear the cold it is our belly, in which digestion takes place: yet our forefathers left it uncovered – and in our society ladies (however soft and delicate they are) occasionally go about with it bare down to the navel. Binding and swaddling up children is not necessary. The mothers of Sparta used to bring up their children with complete freedom of movement for their limbs, without binders or fastenings.62 Infant cries are common to most other animals; nearly all can be seen wailing and whining long after they are born; such behaviour is quite appropriate to the helplessness that they feel. As for eating, it is natural to us and to them; it does not have to be learned.
[B] Sentit enim vim quisque suam quam possit abuti.
[For every creature feels the powers at its disposal.]63
[A] Does anyone doubt that a child, once able to feed himself, would know how to go in search of food? And Earth, with no farming and with none of our arts, produces quite enough for his needs and offers it to him – perhaps not at all seasons, but neither does she do that for the beasts: witness the stores we can see ants or others provide for the barren season of the year. Those peoples we have recently discovered, so abundantly furnished with food and natural drinks needing no care or toil, have taught us that there is other food beside bread and that Mother Nature can provide us plenteously, without ploughing, with all we need – indeed (as is likely) more straightforwardly and more richly than she does nowadays, when we have brought in our artificial skills.
Et tellus nitidas fruges vinetaque laeta
Sponte sua primum mortalibus ipsa creavit;
Ipsa dedit dulces foetus et pabula laeta,
Quae nunc vix nostro grandescunt aucta labore,
Conterimusque boves et vires agricolarum.
[And Earth herself first willingly provided grain and cheerful vines; she gave sweet produce and good pastures, such as, with all our increased toil, we can but scarcely make to grow; we wear out oxen and the strength of farmers…]64
The lawless flood of our greed outstrips everything we invent to try and slake it.
As for armaments, we have more natural ones than most other animals do, as well as a greater variety in our movements; we draw greater service from them, too – naturally, without being taught. Men trained to fight naked throw themselves into danger just as our men do. Although some beasts are better armed than we are, we are better armed than others. And we are given to covering the body with acquired means of protection because Nature teaches us to do so instinctively.
To see that this is true, note how the elephant sharpens to a point the teeth which it uses to fight with (for it has special teeth reserved for fighting, and never used for other tasks); when bulls come out to fight they throw up dust and scatter it round about; wild boars whet their tusks; and the ichneumon, before coming to grips with the crocodile, takes mud, kneaded and compressed, and smears it over itself as a crust to serve as body-armour. Why do we not say, therefore, that arming ourselves with sticks and iron bars is equally natural?65
As for the power of speech, it is certain that, if it is not natural, then it cannot be necessary. And yet I believe (though it would be difficult to assay it) that if a child, before learning to talk, were brought up in total solitude, then he would have some sort of speech to express his concepts; it is simply not believable that Nature has refused to us men a faculty granted to most other animals; we can see they have means of complaining, rejoicing, calling on each other for help or inviting each other to love; they do so by meaningful utterances: if that is not talking, what is it? [B] How could they fail to talk among themselves, since they talk to us and we to them? How many ways we have of speaking to our dogs and they of replying to us! We use different languages again, and make different cries, to call birds, pigs, bulls and horses; we change idiom according to each species.
[AI] Così per entro loro schiera bruna
S’ammusa l’una con l’altra formica
Forse à spiar lor via, e lor fortuna.
[As one ant from their dark battalion stops to talk to another, perhaps asking the way or how things are faring.]
And does not Lactantius appear to attribute not only speech to animals, but laughter too?
[A] The different varieties of speech found among men of different countries can be paralleled in animals of the same species. On this subject Aristotle cites the ways in which the call of the partridge varies from place to place.
[B] variaeque volucres
Longe alias alio jaciunt in tempore voces,
Et partim mutant cum tempestatibus una
Raucisonos cantus.
[At different times some birds utter highly different sounds, some even making their songs more raucous with changes in the weather.]
[A] But we do not know what language an isolated child would actually speak and the guesses made about it all seem improbable.66
If anyone challenges my opinion, citing the f
act that people who are born deaf never learn to talk at all, I have an answer to that: it is not simply because they are unable to receive instruction in speech through the ear but rather because of the intimate relationship which exists between the faculty of hearing (the power they are deprived of) and the faculty of speech, which are by their nature closely sutured together. Whenever we talk, we must first talk as it were to ourselves: our speech first sounds in our own ears, then we utter it into the ears of other people.
I have gone into all this to emphasize similarities with things human, so bringing Man into conformity with the majority of creatures. We are neither above them nor below them. ‘Everything under the Sky’, said the Wise Man, ‘runs according to like laws and fortune.’67
[B] Indupedita suis fatalibus omnia vinclis.
[All things are enchained in the fetters of their destiny.]
[A] Some difference there is: there are orders and degrees: but always beneath the countenance of Nature who is one and the same.
[B] res quaeque suo ritu procedit, et omnes
Foedere naturae certo discrimina servant.
[Each thing proceeds after its own manner, and all things maintain their distinctive qualities by the fixed compact of Nature.]68
[A] Man must be restrained, with his own rank, within the boundary walls of this polity: the wretch has no stomach for effectively clambering over them; he is trussed up and bound, subject to the same restraints as the other creatures of his natural order. His condition is a very modest one. As for his essential being, he has no true privilege or pre-eminence: what he thinks or fancies he has, has no savour, no body to it. Granted that, of all the animals, Man alone has freedom to think and such unruly ways of doing so that he can imagine things which are and things which are not, imagine his wishes, or the false and the true! but he has to pay a high price for this advantage – and he has little cause to boast about it, since it is the chief source of the woes which beset him: sin, sickness, irresolution, confusion and despair.
To get back to the subject, there is, I say, no rational likelihood that beasts are forced to do by natural inclination the selfsame things which we do by choice and ingenuity. From similar effects we should conclude that there are similar faculties. Consequently, we should admit that animals employ the same method and the same reasoning as ourselves when we do anything.69 Why should we think that they have inner natural instincts different from anything we experience in ourselves? Added to which, it is more honourable that we be guided towards regular, obligatory behaviour by the natural and ineluctable properties of our being: that is more God-like than rash and fortuitous freedom; it is safer to leave the driver’s reins in Nature’s hands, not ours. Our empty arrogance makes us prefer to owe our adequacies to our selves rather than to the bounty of Nature; we prefer to lavish the natural goods on other animals, giving them up so as to flatter and honour ourselves with acquired properties. We do that, it seems to me, out of some simple-minded humour. Personally I value graces which are mine since I was born with them more than those which I have had to beg and borrow as an apprentice. It is not within our power to acquire a higher recommendation than to be favoured by God and Nature.
Consider the fox which Thracians employ when they want to cross the ice of a frozen river; with this end in view they let it loose. Were we to see it stopping at the river’s edge, bringing its ear close to the ice to judge from the noise how near to the surface the current is running; darting forward or pulling back according to its estimate of the thickness or thinness of the ice, would it not be right to conclude that the same reasoning passes through its head as would pass through ours and that it ratiocinates and draws consequences by its natural intelligence like this: ‘That which makes a noise is moving; that which moves is not frozen; that which is not frozen is liquid; that which is liquid bends under weight’? Attributing all that exclusively to its keen sense of hearing, without any reasoning or drawing of consequences on the part of the fox, is unthinkable, a chimera. The same judgement should apply to all the ingenious ruses by which beasts protect themselves from our schemes against them.
Should we pride ourself on our ability to capture them and make them work for us? But that is no more than the advantage we have over each other: our slaves are in the same condition. [B] Were not the Climacides Syrian slave-women who went down on all fours to serve as steps or ladders for the ladies to climb up into their coaches? [A] Even the majority of free men and women, for very slight advantages, place themselves in the power of others. [C] Thracian wives and concubines beg to be selected for slaughter over the dead husband’s tomb. [A] Have tyrants ever failed to find men sworn and devoted to them – even though some require them to follow them in death as in life? [B] Whole armies have been bound to their captains that way.
The form of oath used in that rough school which trained gladiators to fight to the finish included the vows: ‘We swear to let ourselves be fettered, burned, beaten or killed by the sword, suffering all that true gladiators suffer at the hands of their Master’; they most scrupulously bound themselves, body and soul, to his service:
Ure meum, si vis, flamma caput, et pete ferro
Corpus, et intorto verbere terga seca.
[Burn my head, if you will, with fire, plunge your iron sword through my body or lash my back with your twisted thongs.]
It was a real, binding undertaking. And yet, one year, ten thousand men were found to enter that school and perish there.
[C] When the Scythians buried their king, over his body they strangled his favourite concubine, his cup-bearer, his ostler, his chamberlain, the guard to his bedchamber and his cook. And on the anniversary of his death they would take fifty pages mounted on fifty horses and kill them, impaling them from behind, from spine to throat, and leaving them dead on parade about his tomb.70
[A] The men who serve us do so more cheaply than our falcons, our horses or our hounds; and they are less carefully looked after – [C] what menial tasks will we not bow to for the convenience of those animals! The most abject slaves, it seems to me, will not willingly do for their masters what princes are proud to do for such creatures. When Diogenes saw his parents striving to purchase his freedom he exclaimed: ‘They must be fools: my Master looks after me and feeds me; he is my servant!’71 So too those who keep animals can be said to serve them, not be served by them.
[A] There is as well a nobility in animals such that, from want of courage, no lion has ever been enslaved to another lion; no horse to another horse. We go out to hunt animals: lions and tigers go out to hunt men; each beast practises a similar sport against another: hounds against hares; pike against tenches; swallows against grasshoppers; sparhawks against blackbirds and skylarks:
[B] serpente ciconia pullos
Nutrit, et inventa per devia rura lacerta,
Et leporem aut capream famulae Jovis, et generosae
In saltu venantur aves.
[The stork feeds her young on snakes and on lizards found in trackless country places; eagles, those noble birds, servants of Jupiter, hunt hares and roes in the forests.]72
We share the fruits of the chase with our hounds and our hawks, as well as its skill and hardships. In Thrace, above Amphipolis, huntsmen and wild falcons each share a half of the booty, very exactly, just as the fisherman by the marshes of the Sea of Azov sets aside, in good faith, half of his catch for the wolves: if not, they go and tear his nets.
[A] We have a kind of hunting conducted more with cunning than with force, as when we use gin-traps, hooks and lines. Similar things are found among beasts. Aristotle relates that the cuttle-fish casts a line of gut from its neck, pays it out and lets it float. When it wants to, it draws it in. It spots some little fish approaching, remains hiding in the sand or mud and allows it to nibble at the end of the gut and gradually draws it in until that little fish is so close it can pounce on it.
As for force, no animal in the world is liable to so many shocks as Man. No need for a whale, an elephant, a crocodi
le or animals like that, any one of which can destroy a great number of men. Lice were enough to make Sylla’s dictatorship vacant; and the heart and life-blood of a great and victorious Emperor serve as breakfast for some tiny worm.
Why do we say, in the case of Man, that distinguishing plants which are useful for life or for medicines from those which are not (recognizing, say, the virtues of rhubarb or polypody) is a sign that he has scientific knowledge based on skill and reason? Yet the goats of Candia can be seen picking out dittany from a million other plants when they are wounded by spears; if a tortoise swallows a viper it at once goes in search of origanum as a purge; the dragon wipes its eyes clear and bright with fennel; storks give themselves salt-water enemas; elephants can remove darts and javelins thrown in battle from their own bodies, from those of their fellows and even from those of their masters (witness the elephant of that King Porus who was killed by Alexander); they do so with more skill than we ever could while causing so little pain. Why do we not call it knowledge and discretion in their case? To lower them in esteem we allege that Nature alone is their Schoolmaster; but that is not to deprive them of knowledge or wisdom: it is to attribute them to them more surely than to ourselves, out of respect for so certain a Teacher.
In all other cases Chrysippus was as scornful a judge of the properties of animals as any philosopher there ever was, yet he watched the actions of a dog which came upon three crossroads – it was either looking for its master or chasing some game fleeing before it; it tried first one road then a second; then, having made sure that neither of them bore any trace of what it was looking for, it charged down the third road without hesitation. Chrysippus was forced to admit that that dog at least reasoned this way: ‘I have tracked my master as far as these crossroads; he must have gone down one of these three paths; not this one; not that one; so, inevitably, he must have gone down this other one.’ Convinced by this reasoned conclusion, it did not sniff at the third path; it made no further investigations but let itself be swayed by the power of reason. Here was pure dialectic: the dog made use of disjunctive and copulative propositions and adequately enumerated the parts. Does it matter whether he learned all this from himself or from the Dialectica of George of Trebizond?
The Complete Essays Page 63