AUTOBULUS. These things, dear friend, you utter,
as the opinion of those people. But we are not to allow
philosophers a remedy to procure easy delivery, as they do
to women that are subject to hard labors, merely that they
may bring us forth justice without any pain or trouble.
For the same persons, even in the greatest matters, will
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not allow to Epicurus so small and pitiful a thing as the
slightest inclination of one only atom, for to make way for
the stars and living creatures and Fortune to come into the
world, and that thereby our free will might be saved. For
we ought either to prove what is doubtful or to assume
what of itself is manifest; so we ought not to take for
granted this doctrine touching beasts as regards justice,
unless it is either confessed or otherwise proved by demonstration. For justice has another way to establish itself,
neither so steep nor so slippery, nor leading to the subversion of evident truths; but which, according to Plato's instruction, my son and thy friend, Soclarus, has showed to
such as are not captiously contentious but willing to learn.
For certain it is, that both Empedocles and Heraclitus held
it for a truth, that man could not be altogether cleared
from injustice in dealing with beasts as he now does;
often bewailing and exclaiming against Nature, as if she
were nothing else but necessity and war, having neither
any thing unmixed nor any thing truly pure, but still
arriving at her end by many, and those unjust and unlawful passions. Whence they affirm that generation itself
originally proceeded from injustice by the conjunction of
immortal with mortal, and that the thing engendered is still
contrary to Nature delighted with the parts of that which
engenders, dismembered from the whole. But this seems
to be too luxuriant and severe an accusation of Nature.
For there is yet a more moderate excuse, which does not
altogether deprive the beasts of reason, yet justifies the
necessary and convenient use of them; which when the
ancients introduced, they detested and utterly discountenanced voracious and voluptuous gluttony. Pythagoras
also resumed the argument, teaching how we might reap
the benefit of the creatures without doing injustice. For
they do no injustice, that chastise and kill such savage
beasts that are both hurtful to man and never will be
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tame. But taming such as are gentle and loving to men,
they thereby make them assistant in the several uses to
which they were ordained,—
The horse and ass, that backs to load resign,
And race of bulls,
which, as Prometheus in Aeschylus
1 observes,
Kind Heaven vouchsafed to men by toil distrest,
With servile limbs his labors to assist.
Thus we make use of dogs to guard our goats and
sheep, while they are milked and shorn. For life does
not presently forsake a man unless he have his platters
of fish or livers of geese, or unless he may kill whole oxen
or kids to supply his banquets, or unless—that he may
disport himself in the theatre or take his pleasure in hunting—he may compel some beasts to be daring and to
fight against their wills, and kill others whom Nature has
not armed to defend themselves. For, in my opinion, he
that is for sport and pastime ought to seek out for such as
will sport and be merry with him. And as it was the saying of Bion, that, though boys throw stones at frogs in
sport, yet the frogs do not die in sport but in earnest; so
in hunting and fishing, the fault is in the men delighting
in the torments and cruel deaths of beasts, and tearing
them without compassion from their whelps and their
young ones. For it is not in the making use of beasts
that men do them wrong, but in the wastefully and cruelly
destroying them.
