The Essays of Montaigne/Book II/Chapter XI
Chapter XI. Of cruelty.
[edit]I fancy virtue to be something else, and something more noble, than good
nature, and the mere propension to goodness, that we are born into the
world withal. Well-disposed and well-descended souls pursue, indeed, the
same methods, and represent in their actions the same face that virtue
itself does: but the word virtue imports, I know not what, more great and
active than merely for a man to suffer himself, by a happy disposition,
to be gently and quietly drawn to the rule of reason. He who, by a
natural sweetness and facility, should despise injuries received, would
doubtless do a very fine and laudable thing; but he who, provoked and
nettled to the quick by an offence, should fortify himself with the arms
of reason against the furious appetite of revenge, and after a great
conflict, master his own passion, would certainly do a great deal more.
The first would do well; the latter virtuously: one action might be
called goodness, and the other virtue; for methinks, the very name of
virtue presupposes difficulty and contention, and cannot be exercised
without an opponent. 'Tis for this reason, perhaps, that we call God
good, mighty, liberal and just; but we do not call Him virtuous, being
that all His operations are natural and without endeavour.—[Rousseau,
in his Emile, book v., adopts this passage almost in the same words.]—
It has been the opinion of many philosophers, not only Stoics, but
Epicureans—and this addition—
["Montaigne stops here to make his excuse for thus naming the
Epicureans with the Stoics, in conformity to the general opinion
that the Epicureans were not so rigid in their morals as the Stoics,
which is not true in the main, as he demonstrates at one view. This
involved Montaigne in a tedious parenthesis, during which it is
proper that the reader be attentive, that he may not entirely lose
the thread of the argument. In some later editions of this author,
it has been attempted to remedy this inconvenience, but without
observing that Montaigne's argument is rendered more feeble and
obscure by such vain repetitions: it is a licence that ought not to
be taken, because he who publishes the work of another, ought to
give it as the other composed ft. But, in Mr Cotton's translation,
he was so puzzled with this enormous parenthesis that he has quite
left it out"—Coste.]
I borrow from the vulgar opinion, which is false, notwithstanding the
witty conceit of Arcesilaus in answer to one, who, being reproached that
many scholars went from his school to the Epicurean, but never any from
thence to his school, said in answer, "I believe it indeed; numbers of
capons being made out of cocks, but never any cocks out of capons."
—[Diogenes Laertius, Life of Archesilaus, lib. iv., 43.]—For, in truth,
the Epicurean sect is not at all inferior to the Stoic in steadiness, and
the rigour of opinions and precepts. And a certain Stoic, showing more
honesty than those disputants, who, in order to quarrel with Epicurus,
and to throw the game into their hands, make him say what he never
thought, putting a wrong construction upon his words, clothing his
sentences, by the strict rules of grammar, with another meaning, and a
different opinion from that which they knew he entertained in his mind
and in his morals, the Stoic, I say, declared that he abandoned the
Epicurean sect, upon this among other considerations, that he thought
their road too lofty and inaccessible;
["And those are called lovers of pleasure, being in effect
lovers of honour and justice, who cultivate and observe all
the virtues."—Cicero, Ep. Fam., xv. i, 19.]
These philosophers say that it is not enough to have the soul seated in
a good place, of a good temper, and well disposed to virtue; it is not
enough to have our resolutions and our reasoning fixed above all the
power of fortune, but that we are, moreover, to seek occasions wherein to
put them to the proof: they would seek pain, necessity, and contempt to
contend with them and to keep the soul in breath:
"Multum sibi adjicit virtus lacessita."
["Virtue is much strengthened by combats."
or: "Virtue attacked adds to its own force."
—Seneca, Ep., 13.]
'Tis one of the reasons why Epaminondas, who was yet of a third sect,
—[The Pythagorean.]—refused the riches fortune presented to him by
very lawful means; because, said he, I am to contend with poverty, in
which extreme he maintained himself to the last. Socrates put himself,
methinks, upon a ruder trial, keeping for his exercise a confounded
scolding wife, which was fighting at sharps. Metellus having, of all the
Roman senators, alone attempted, by the power of virtue, to withstand the
violence of Saturninus, tribune of the people at Rome, who would, by all
means, cause an unjust law to pass in favour of the commons, and, by so
doing, having incurred the capital penalties that Saturninus had
established against the dissentient, entertained those who, in this
extremity, led him to execution with words to this effect: That it was a
thing too easy and too base to do ill; and that to do well where there
was no danger was a common thing; but that to do well where there was
danger was the proper office of a man of virtue. These words of Metellus
very clearly represent to us what I would make out, viz., that virtue
refuses facility for a companion; and that the easy, smooth, and
descending way by which the regular steps of a sweet disposition of
nature are conducted is not that of a true virtue; she requires a rough
and stormy passage; she will have either exotic difficulties to wrestle
with, like that of Metellus, by means whereof fortune delights to
interrupt the speed of her career, or internal difficulties, that the
inordinate appetites and imperfections of our condition introduce to
disturb her.
I am come thus far at my ease; but here it comes into my head that the
soul of Socrates, the most perfect that ever came to my knowledge, should
by this rule be of very little recommendation; for I cannot conceive in
that person any the least motion of a vicious inclination: I cannot
imagine there could be any difficulty or constraint in the course of his
virtue: I know his reason to be so powerful and sovereign over him that
she would never have suffered a vicious appetite so much as to spring in
him. To a virtue so elevated as his, I have nothing to oppose. Methinks
I see him march, with a victorious and triumphant pace, in pomp and at
his ease, without opposition or disturbance. If virtue cannot shine
bright, but by the conflict of contrary appetites, shall we then say that
she cannot subsist without the assistance of vice, and that it is from
her that she derives her reputation and honour? What then, also, would
become of that brave and generous Epicurean pleasure, which makes account
that it nourishes virtue tenderly in her lap, and there makes it play and
wanton, giving it for toys to play withal, shame, fevers, poverty, death,
and torments? If I presuppose that a perfect virtue manifests itself in
contending, in patient enduring of pain, and undergoing the uttermost
extremity of the gout; without being moved in her seat; if I give her
troubles and difficulty for her necessary objects: what will become of a
virtue elevated to such a degree, as not only to despise pain, but,
moreover, to rejoice in it, and to be tickled with the throes of a sharp
colic, such as the Epicureans have established, and of which many of
them, by their actions, have given most manifest proofs? As have several
others, who I find to have surpassed in effects even the very rules of
their discipline. Witness the younger Cato: When I see him die, and
tearing out his own bowels, I am not satisfied simply to believe that he
had then his soul totally exempt from all trouble and horror: I cannot
think that he only maintained himself in the steadiness that the Stoical
rules prescribed him; temperate, without emotion, and imperturbed. There
was, methinks, something in the virtue of this man too sprightly and
fresh to stop there; I believe that, without doubt, he felt a pleasure
and delight in so noble an action, and was more pleased in it than in any
other of his life:
"Sic abiit a vita, ut causam moriendi nactum se esse gauderet."
["He quitted life rejoicing that a reason for dying had arisen."
—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 30.]
I believe it so thoroughly that I question whether he would have been
content to have been deprived of the occasion of so brave an exploit; and
if the goodness that made him embrace the public concern more than his
own, withheld me not, I should easily fall into an opinion that he
thought himself obliged to fortune for having put his virtue upon so
brave a trial, and for having favoured that theif—[Caesar]—in treading
underfoot the ancient liberty of his country. Methinks I read in this
action I know not what exaltation in his soul, and an extraordinary and
manly emotion of pleasure, when he looked upon the generosity and height
of his enterprise:
"Deliberate morte ferocior,"
["The more courageous from the deliberation to die."
—Horace, Od., i. 37, 29.]
not stimulated with any hope of glory, as the popular and effeminate
judgments of some have concluded (for that consideration was too mean and
low to possess so generous, so haughty, and so determined a heart as
his), but for the very beauty of the thing in itself, which he who had
the handling of the springs discerned more clearly and in its perfection
than we are able to do. Philosophy has obliged me in determining that so
brave an action had been indecently placed in any other life than that of
Cato; and that it only appertained to his to end so; notwithstanding, and
according to reason, he commanded his son and the senators who
accompanied him to take another course in their affairs:
"Catoni, quum incredibilem natura tribuisset gravitatem,
eamque ipse perpetue constantia roboravisset, semperque
in proposito consilio permansisset, moriendum potius,
quam tyranni vultus aspiciendus, erat."
["Cato, whom nature had given incredible dignity, which he had
fortified by perpetual constancy, ever remaining of his
predetermined opinion, preferred to die rather than to look
on the countenance of a tyrant."—Cicero, De Ofc., i. 31.]
Every death ought to hold proportion with the life before it; we do not
become others for dying. I always interpret the death by the life
preceding; and if any one tell me of a death strong and constant in
appearance, annexed to a feeble life, I conclude it produced by some
feeble cause, and suitable to the life before. The easiness then of his
death and the facility of dying he had acquired by the vigour of his
soul; shall we say that it ought to abate anything of the lustre of his
virtue? And who, that has his brain never so little tinctured with the
true philosophy, can be content to imagine Socrates only free from fear
and passion in the accident of his prison, fetters, and condemnation?
and that will not discover in him not only firmness and constancy (which
was his ordinary condition), but, moreover, I know not what new
satisfaction, and a frolic cheerfulness in his last words and actions?
In the start he gave with the pleasure of scratching his leg when his
irons were taken off, does he not discover an equal serenity and joy in
his soul for being freed from past inconveniences, and at the same time
to enter into the knowledge of the things to come? Cato shall pardon me,
if he please; his death indeed is more tragical and more lingering; but
yet this is, I know not how, methinks, finer. Aristippus, to one that
was lamenting this death: "The gods grant me such an one," said he.
A man discerns in the soul of these two great men and their imitators
(for I very much doubt whether there were ever their equals) so perfect a
habitude to virtue, that it was turned to a complexion. It is no longer
a laborious virtue, nor the precepts of reason, to maintain which the
soul is so racked, but the very essence of their soul, its natural and
ordinary habit; they have rendered it such by a long practice of
philosophical precepts having lit upon a rich and fine nature; the
vicious passions that spring in us can find no entrance into them; the
force and vigour of their soul stifle and extinguish irregular desires,
so soon as they begin to move.
Now, that it is not more noble, by a high and divine resolution, to
hinder the birth of temptations, and to be so formed to virtue, that the
very seeds of vice are rooted out, than to hinder by main force their
progress; and, having suffered ourselves to be surprised with the first
motions of the passions, to arm ourselves and to stand firm to oppose
their progress, and overcome them; and that this second effect is not
also much more generous than to be simply endowed with a facile and
affable nature, of itself disaffected to debauchery and vice, I do not
think can be doubted; for this third and last sort of virtue seems to
render a man innocent, but not virtuous; free from doing ill, but not apt
enough to do well: considering also, that this condition is so near
neighbour to imperfection and cowardice, that I know not very well how to
separate the confines and distinguish them: the very names of goodness
and innocence are, for this reason, in some sort grown into contempt.
I very well know that several virtues, as chastity, sobriety, and
temperance, may come to a man through personal defects. Constancy in
danger, if it must be so called, the contempt of death, and patience in
misfortunes, may ofttimes be found in men for want of well judging of
such accidents, and not apprehending them for such as they are. Want of
apprehension and stupidity sometimes counterfeit virtuous effects as I
have often seen it happen, that men have been commended for what really
merited blame. An Italian lord once said this, in my presence, to the
disadvantage of his own nation: that the subtlety of the Italians, and
the vivacity of their conceptions were so great, and they foresaw the
dangers and accidents that might befall them so far off, that it was not
to be thought strange, if they were often, in war, observed to provide
for their safety, even before they had discovered the peril; that we
French and the Spaniards, who were not so cunning, went on further, and
that we must be made to see and feel the danger before we would take the
alarm; but that even then we could not stick to it. But the Germans and
Swiss, more gross and heavy, had not the sense to look about them, even
when the blows were falling about their ears. Peradventure, he only
talked so for mirth's sake; and yet it is most certain that in war raw
soldiers rush into dangers with more precipitancy than after they have
been cudgelled*—(The original has eschauldex—scalded)
"Haud ignarus . . . . quantum nova gloria in armis,
Et praedulce decus, primo certamine possit."
["Not ignorant how much power the fresh glory of arms and sweetest
honour possess in the first contest."—AEneid, xi. 154]
For this reason it is that, when we judge of a particular action, we are
to consider the circumstances, and the whole man by whom it is performed,
before we give it a name.
To instance in myself: I have sometimes known my friends call that
prudence in me, which was merely fortune; and repute that courage and
patience, which was judgment and opinion; and attribute to me one title
for another, sometimes to my advantage and sometimes otherwise. As to
the rest, I am so far from being arrived at the first and most perfect
degree of excellence, where virtue is turned into habit, that even of the
second I have made no great proofs. I have not been very solicitous to
curb the desires by which I have been importuned. My virtue is a virtue,
or rather an innocence, casual and accidental. If I had been born of a
more irregular complexion, I am afraid I should have made scurvy work;
for I never observed any great stability in my soul to resist passions,
if they were never so little vehement: I know not how to nourish quarrels
and debates in my own bosom, and, consequently, owe myself no great
thanks that I am free from several vices:
"Si vitiis mediocribus et mea paucis
Mendosa est natura, alioqui recta, velut si
Egregio inspersos reprehendas corpore naevos:"
["If my nature be disfigured only with slight and few vices, and is
otherwise just, it is as if you should blame moles on a fair body."
—Horatius, Sat., i. 6, 65.]
I owe it rather to my fortune than my reason. She has caused me to be
descended of a race famous for integrity and of a very good father; I
know not whether or no he has infused into me part of his humours, or
whether domestic examples and the good education of my infancy have
insensibly assisted in the work, or, if I was otherwise born so:
"Seu Libra, seu me Scorpius adspicit
Formidolosus, pars violentior
Natalis hors, seu tyrannus
Hesperive Capricornus undae:"
["Whether the Balance or dread Scorpio, more potent over my natal
hour, aspects me, or Capricorn, supreme over the Hesperian sea."
—Horace, Od., ii. 117.]
but so it is, that I have naturally a horror for most vices. The answer
of Antisthenes to him who asked him, which was the best apprenticeship
"to unlearn evil," seems to point at this. I have them in horror, I say,
with a detestation so natural, and so much my own, that the same instinct
and impression I brought of them with me from my nurse, I yet retain, and
no temptation whatever has had the power to make me alter it. Not so
much as my own discourses, which in some things lashing out of the common
road might seem easily to license me to actions that my natural
inclination makes me hate. I will say a prodigious thing, but I will say
it, however: I find myself in many things more under reputation by my
manners than by my opinion, and my concupiscence less debauched than my
reason. Aristippus instituted opinions so bold in favour of pleasure and
riches as set all the philosophers against him: but as to his manners,
Dionysius the tyrant, having presented three beautiful women before him,
to take his choice; he made answer, that he would choose them all, and
that Paris got himself into trouble for having preferred one before the
other two: but, having taken them home to his house, he sent them back
untouched. His servant finding himself overladen upon the way, with the
money he carried after him, he ordered him to pour out and throw away
that which troubled him. And Epicurus, whose doctrines were so
irreligious and effeminate, was in his life very laborious and devout;
he wrote to a friend of his that he lived only upon biscuit and water,
entreating him to send him a little cheese, to lie by him against he had
a mind to make a feast. Must it be true, that to be a perfect good man,
we must be so by an occult, natural, and universal propriety, without
law, reason, or example? The debauches wherein I have been engaged, have
not been, I thank God, of the worst sort, and I have condemned them in
myself, for my judgment was never infected by them; on the contrary,
I accuse them more severely in myself than in any other; but that is all,
for, as to the rest. I oppose too little resistance and suffer myself to
incline too much to the other side of the balance, excepting that I
moderate them, and prevent them from mixing with other vices, which for
the most part will cling together, if a man have not a care. I have
contracted and curtailed mine, to make them as single and as simple as I
can:
"Nec ultra
Errorem foveo."
["Nor do I cherish error further."
or: "Nor carry wrong further."
—Juvenal, viii. 164.]
For as to the opinion of the Stoics, who say, "That the wise man when he
works, works by all the virtues together, though one be most apparent,
according to the nature of the action"; and herein the similitude of a
human body might serve them somewhat, for the action of anger cannot
work, unless all the humours assist it, though choler predominate;
—if they will thence draw a like consequence, that when the wicked man
does wickedly, he does it by all the vices together, I do not believe it
to be so, or else I understand them not, for I by effect find the
contrary. These are sharp, unsubstantial subleties, with which
philosophy sometimes amuses itself. I follow some vices, but I fly
others as much as a saint would do. The Peripatetics also disown this
indissoluble connection; and Aristotle is of opinion that a prudent and
just man may be intemperate and inconsistent. Socrates confessed to some
who had discovered a certain inclination to vice in his physiognomy, that
it was, in truth, his natural propension, but that he had by discipline
corrected it. And such as were familiar with the philosopher Stilpo
said, that being born with addiction to wine and women, he had by study
rendered himself very abstinent both from the one and the other.
What I have in me of good, I have, quite contrary, by the chance of my
birth; and hold it not either by law, precept, or any other instruction;
the innocence that is in me is a simple one; little vigour and no art.
Amongst other vices, I mortally hate cruelty, both by nature and
judgment, as the very extreme of all vices: nay, with so much tenderness
that I cannot see a chicken's neck pulled off without trouble, and cannot
without impatience endure the cry of a hare in my dog's teeth, though the
chase be a violent pleasure. Such as have sensuality to encounter,
freely make use of this argument, to shew that it is altogether "vicious
and unreasonable; that when it is at the height, it masters us to that
degree that a man's reason can have no access," and instance our own
experience in the act of love,
"Quum jam praesagit gaudia corpus,
Atque in eo est Venus,
ut muliebria conserat arva."
[None of the translators of the old editions used for this etext
have been willing to translate this passage from Lucretius, iv.
1099; they take a cop out by bashfully saying: "The sense is in the
preceding passage of the text." D.W.]
wherein they conceive that the pleasure so transports us, that our reason
cannot perform its office, whilst we are in such ecstasy and rapture. I
know very well it may be otherwise, and that a man may sometimes, if he
will, gain this point over himself to sway his soul, even in the critical
moment, to think of something else; but then he must ply it to that bent.
I know that a man may triumph over the utmost effort of this pleasure: I
have experienced it in myself, and have not found Venus so imperious a
goddess, as many, and much more virtuous men than I, declare. I do not
consider it a miracle, as the Queen of Navarre does in one of the Tales
of her Heptameron—["Vu gentil liure pour son estoffe."]—(which is a
very pretty book of its kind), nor for a thing of extreme difficulty, to
pass whole nights, where a man has all the convenience and liberty he can
desire, with a long-coveted mistress, and yet be true to the pledge first
given to satisfy himself with kisses and suchlike endearments, without
pressing any further. I conceive that the example of the pleasure of the
chase would be more proper; wherein though the pleasure be less, there is
the higher excitement of unexpected joy, giving no time for the reason,
taken by surprise, to prepare itself for the encounter, when after a long
quest the beast starts up on a sudden in a place where, peradventure, we
least expected it; the shock and the ardour of the shouts and cries of
the hunters so strike us, that it would be hard for those who love this
lesser chase, to turn their thoughts upon the instant another way; and
the poets make Diana triumph over the torch and shafts of Cupid:
"Quis non malarum, quas amor curas habet,
Haec inter obliviscitur?"
["Who, amongst such delights would not remove out of his thoughts
the anxious cares of love."—Horace, Epod., ii. 37.]
To return to what I was saying before, I am tenderly compassionate of
others' afflictions, and should readily cry for company, if, upon any
occasion whatever, I could cry at all. Nothing tempts my tears but
tears, and not only those that are real and true, but whatever they are,
feigned or painted. I do not much lament the dead, and should envy them
rather; but I very much lament the dying. The savages do not so much
offend me, in roasting and eating the bodies of the dead, as they do who
torment and persecute the living. Nay, I cannot look so much as upon the
ordinary executions of justice, how reasonable soever, with a steady eye.
Some one having to give testimony of Julius Caesar's clemency; "he was,"
says he, "mild in his revenges. Having compelled the pirates to yield by
whom he had before been taken prisoner and put to ransom; forasmuch as he
had threatened them with the cross, he indeed condemned them to it, but
it was after they had been first strangled. He punished his secretary
Philemon, who had attempted to poison him, with no greater severity than
mere death." Without naming that Latin author,—[Suetonius, Life of
Casay, c. 74.]—who thus dares to allege as a testimony of mercy the
killing only of those by whom we have been offended; it is easy to guess
that he was struck with the horrid and inhuman examples of cruelty
practised by the Roman tyrants.
For my part, even in justice itself, all that exceeds a simple death
appears to me pure cruelty; especially in us who ought, having regard to
their souls, to dismiss them in a good and calm condition; which cannot
be, when we have agitated them by insufferable torments. Not long since,
a soldier who was a prisoner, perceiving from a tower where he was shut
up, that the people began to assemble to the place of execution, and that
the carpenters were busy erecting a scaffold, he presently concluded
that the preparation was for him, and therefore entered into a resolution
to kill himself, but could find no instrument to assist him in his design
except an old rusty cart-nail that fortune presented to him; with this he
first gave himself two great wounds about his throat, but finding these
would not do, he presently afterwards gave himself a third in the belly,
where he left the nail sticking up to the head. The first of his keepers
who came in found him in this condition: yet alive, but sunk down and
exhausted by his wounds. To make use of time, therefore, before he
should die, they made haste to read his sentence; which having done, and
he hearing that he was only condemned to be beheaded, he seemed to take
new courage, accepted wine which he had before refused, and thanked his
judges for the unhoped-for mildness of their sentence; saying, that he
had taken a resolution to despatch himself for fear of a more severe and
insupportable death, having entertained an opinion, by the preparations
he had seen in the place, that they were resolved to torment him with
some horrible execution, and seemed to be delivered from death in having
it changed from what he apprehended.
I should advise that those examples of severity by which 'tis designed to
retain the people in their duty, might be exercised upon the dead bodies
of criminals; for to see them deprived of sepulture, to see them boiled
and divided into quarters, would almost work as much upon the vulgar, as
the pain they make the living endure; though that in effect be little or
nothing, as God himself says, "Who kill the body, and after that have no
more that they can do;"—[Luke, xii. 4.]—and the poets singularly
dwell upon the horrors of this picture, as something worse than death:
"Heu! reliquias semiustas regis, denudatis ossibus,
Per terram sanie delibutas foede divexarier."
["Alas! that the half-burnt remains of the king, exposing his bones,
should be foully dragged along the ground besmeared with gore."
—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 44.]
I happened to come by one day accidentally at Rome, just as they were
upon executing Catena, a notorious robber: he was strangled without any
emotion of the spectators, but when they came to cut him in quarters, the
hangman gave not a blow that the people did not follow with a doleful cry
and exclamation, as if every one had lent his sense of feeling to the
miserable carcase. Those inhuman excesses ought to be exercised upon the
bark, and not upon the quick. Artaxerxes, in almost a like case,
moderated the severity of the ancient laws of Persia, ordaining that the
nobility who had committed a fault, instead of being whipped, as they
were used to be, should be stripped only and their clothes whipped for
them; and that whereas they were wont to tear off their hair, they should
only take off their high-crowned tiara.'—[Plutarch, Notable Sayings of
the Ancient King.]—The so devout Egyptians thought they sufficiently
satisfied the divine justice by sacrificing hogs in effigy and
representation; a bold invention to pay God so essential a substance in
picture only and in show.
I live in a time wherein we abound in incredible examples of this vice,
through the licence of our civil wars; and we see nothing in ancient
histories more extreme than what we have proof of every day, but I
cannot, any the more, get used to it. I could hardly persuade myself,
before I saw it with my eyes, that there could be found souls so cruel
and fell, who, for the sole pleasure of murder, would commit it; would
hack and lop off the limbs of others; sharpen their wits to invent
unusual torments and new kinds of death, without hatred, without profit,
and for no other end but only to enjoy the pleasant spectacle of the
gestures and motions, the lamentable groans and cries of a man dying in
anguish. For this is the utmost point to which cruelty can arrive:
"Ut homo hominem, non iratus, non timens,
tantum spectaturus, occidat."
["That a man should kill a man, not being angry, not in fear, only
for the sake of the spectacle."—Seneca, Ep., 90.]
For my own part, I cannot without grief see so much as an innocent beast
pursued and killed that has no defence, and from which we have received
no offence at all; and that which frequently happens, that the stag we
hunt, finding himself weak and out of breath, and seeing no other remedy,
surrenders himself to us who pursue him, imploring mercy by his tears:
"Questuque cruentus,
Atque imploranti similis,"
["Who, bleeding, by his tears seems to crave mercy."
—AEnead, vii. 501.]
has ever been to me a very unpleasing sight; and I hardly ever take a
beast alive that I do not presently turn out again. Pythagoras bought
them of fishermen and fowlers to do the same:
"Primoque a caede ferarum,
Incaluisse puto maculatum sanguine ferrum."
["I think 'twas slaughter of wild beasts that first stained the
steel of man with blood."—Ovid, Met., xv. 106.]
Those natures that are sanguinary towards beasts discover a natural
proneness to cruelty. After they had accustomed themselves at Rome to
spectacles of the slaughter of animals, they proceeded to those of the
slaughter of men, of gladiators. Nature has herself, I fear, imprinted
in man a kind of instinct to inhumanity; nobody takes pleasure in seeing
beasts play with and caress one another, but every one is delighted with
seeing them dismember, and tear one another to pieces. And that I may
not be laughed at for the sympathy I have with them, theology itself
enjoins us some favour in their behalf; and considering that one and the
same master has lodged us together in this palace for his service, and
that they, as well as we, are of his family, it has reason to enjoin us
some affection and regard to them. Pythagoras borrowed the
metempsychosis from the Egyptians; but it has since been received by
several nations, and particularly by our Druids:
"Morte carent animae; semperque, priore relicts
Sede, novis domibus vivunt, habitantque receptae."
["Souls never die, but, having left their former seat, live
and are received into new homes."—Ovid, Met., xv. 158.]
The religion of our ancient Gauls maintained that souls, being eternal,
never ceased to remove and shift their places from one body to another;
mixing moreover with this fancy some consideration of divine justice; for
according to the deportments of the soul, whilst it had been in
Alexander, they said that God assigned it another body to inhabit, more
or less painful, and proper for its condition:
"Muta ferarum
Cogit vincla pati; truculentos ingerit ursis,
Praedonesque lupis; fallaces vulpibus addit:
Atque ubi per varios annos, per mille figuras
Egit, Lethaeo purgatos flumine, tandem
Rursus ad humanae revocat primordia formae:"
["He makes them wear the silent chains of brutes, the bloodthirsty
souls he encloses in bears, the thieves in wolves, the deceivers in
foxes; where, after successive years and a thousand forms, man had
spent his life, and after purgation in Lethe's flood, at last he
restores them to the primordial human shapes."
—Claudian, In Ruf., ii. 482.]
If it had been valiant, he lodged it in the body of a lion; if
voluptuous, in that of a hog; if timorous, in that of a hart or hare; if
malicious, in that of a fox, and so of the rest, till having purified it
by this chastisement, it again entered into the body of some other man:
"Ipse ego nam memini, Trojani, tempore belli
Panthoides Euphorbus eram."
["For I myself remember that, in the days of the Trojan war, I was
Euphorbus, son of Pantheus."—Ovid, Met., xv. 160; and see Diogenes
Laertius, Life of Pythagoras.]
As to the relationship betwixt us and beasts, I do not much admit of it;
nor of that which several nations, and those among the most ancient and
most noble, have practised, who have not only received brutes into their
society and companionship, but have given them a rank infinitely above
themselves, esteeming them one while familiars and favourites of the
gods, and having them in more than human reverence and respect; others
acknowledged no other god or divinity than they:
"Bellux a barbaris propter beneficium consecratae."
["Beasts, out of opinion of some benefit received by them, were
consecrated by barbarians"—Cicero, De Natura Deor., i. 36.]
"Crocodilon adorat
Pars haec; illa pavet saturam serpentibus ibin:
Effigies sacri hic nitet aurea cercopitheci;
Hic piscem flumints, illic
Oppida tota canem venerantur."
["This place adores the crocodile; another dreads the ibis, feeder
on serpents; here shines the golden image of the sacred ape; here
men venerate the fish of the river; there whole towns worship a
dog."—Juvenal, xv. 2.]
And the very interpretation that Plutarch, gives to this error, which is
very well conceived, is advantageous to them: for he says that it was not
the cat or the ox, for example, that the Egyptians adored: but that they,
in those beasts, adored some image of the divine faculties; in this,
patience and utility: in that, vivacity, or, as with our neighbours the
Burgundians and all the Germans, impatience to see themselves shut up; by
which they represented liberty, which they loved and adored above all
other godlike attributes, and so of the rest. But when, amongst the more
moderate opinions, I meet with arguments that endeavour to demonstrate
the near resemblance betwixt us and animals, how large a share they have
in our greatest privileges, and with how much probability they compare us
together, truly I abate a great deal of our presumption, and willingly
resign that imaginary sovereignty that is attributed to us over other
creatures.
But supposing all this were not true, there is nevertheless a certain
respect, a general duty of humanity, not only to beasts that have life
and sense, but even to trees, and plants. We owe justice to men, and
graciousness and benignity to other creatures that are capable of it;
there is a certain commerce and mutual obligation betwixt them and us.
Nor shall I be afraid to confess the tenderness of my nature so childish,
that I cannot well refuse to play with my dog, when he the most
unseasonably importunes me to do so. The Turks have alms and hospitals
for beasts. The Romans had public care to the nourishment of geese, by
whose vigilance their Capitol had been preserved. The Athenians made a
decree that the mules and moyls which had served at the building of the
temple called Hecatompedon should be free and suffered to pasture at
their own choice, without hindrance. The Agrigentines had a common use
solemnly to inter the beasts they had a kindness for, as horses of some
rare quality, dogs, and useful birds, and even those that had only been
kept to divert their children; and the magnificence that was ordinary
with them in all other things, also particularly appeared in the
sumptuosity and numbers of monuments erected to this end, and which
remained in their beauty several ages after. The Egyptians buried
wolves, bears, crocodiles, dogs, and cats in sacred places, embalmed
their bodies, and put on mourning at their death. Cimon gave an
honourable sepulture to the mares with which he had three times gained
the prize of the course at the Olympic Games. The ancient Xantippus
caused his dog to be interred on an eminence near the sea, which has ever
since retained the name, and Plutarch says, that he had a scruple about
selling for a small profit to the slaughterer an ox that had been long in
his service.