De sollertia animalium

AUTOBULUS.[*](There seems to be a great deal more anti-Stoic polemic in the following speeches than von Arnim has admitted into his compilation. See especially the notes on 961 c ff. infra.) But who ever, my dear Soclarus, maintained that, while rationality exists in the universe, there is nothing irrational ? For there is a plentiful abundance of the irrational in all things that are not endowed with a soul; we need no other sort of counterpart for the rational: everything that is soulless, since it has no reason or intelligence, is by definition in opposition to that which, together with a soul, possesses also reason and understanding. Yet suppose someone were to maintain that nature must not be left maimed, but that that part of nature which, is endowed with a soul should have its irrational as well as its rational aspect, someone else is bound to maintain that nature endowed with a soul must have both an imaginative and an unimaginative part, and both a sentient part and an insentient. They want nature, they say, to have these counteractive and contraposed positives and negatives of the same kind counterbalanced, as it were. But if it is ridiculous to require an antithesis of sentient and insentient within the class of living things, or an antithesis of imaginative and unimaginative, seeing that it is the nature of every creature with a soul to be sentient and imaginative from the hour of its birth, so he, also, is unreasonable who demands a division of the living into a rational and an irrational part - and that, too, when he is arguing with men who believe that nothing is endowed with sensation which does not also partake of intelligence and that there is no living thing which does not naturally

possess both opinion and reason, just as it has sensation and appetite. For nature, which, they[*](Aristotle and Theophrastus passim; cf. also Mor. 646 c, 698 b.) rightly say, does everything with some purpose and to some end, did not create the sentient creature merely to be sentient when something happens to it. No, for there are in the world many things friendly to it, many also hostile; and it could not survive for a moment if it had not learned to give the one sort a wide berth while freely mixing with the other. It is, to be sure, sensation that enables each creature to recognize both kinds; but the acts of seizing or pursuing that ensue upon the perception of what is beneficial, as well as the eluding or fleeing of what is destructive or painful, could by no means occur in creatures naturally incapable of some sort of reasoning and judging, remembering and attending. Those beings, then, which you deprive of all expectation, memory, design, or preparation, and of all hopes, fears, desires, or griefs - they will have no use for eyes or ears either, even though they have them. Indeed, it would be better to be rid of all sensation and imagination that has nothing to make use of it, rather than to know toil and distress and pain while not possessing any means of averting them.

There is, in fact, a work of Strato,[*](Frag. 112, ed. Wehrli (Die Schule des Aristoteles, v, p. 34).) the natural philosopher, which proves that it is impossible to have sensation at all without some action of the intelligence. Often, it is true, while we are busy reading, the letters may fall on our eyes, or words may fall on our ears, which escape our attention since our minds are intent on other things; but later the mind recovers, shifts its course, and follows up every

detail that had been neglected; and this is the meaning of the saying[*](A frequently occurring quotation, attributed to Epicharmus in Mor. 336 b (Kaibel, Com. Graec. Frag. i, p. 137, frag. 249; Diels, Frag. der Vorsok. i, p. 200, frag. 12); see also Mor. 98 c and 975 b infra. The fullest interpretation is that of Schottlaender, Hermes, lxii, pp. 437 f.; and see also Wehrli’s note, pp. 72 f.):

1. Mind has sight and Mind has hearing;
2. Everything else is deaf and blind,

indicating that the impact on eyes and ears brings no perception if the understanding is not present. For this reason also King Cleomenes, when a recital made at a banquet was applauded and he was asked if it did not seem excellent, replied that the others must judge, for his mind was in the Peloponnesus. So that, if we are so constituted that to have sensation we must have understanding, then it must follow that all creatures which have sensation can also understand.

AUTOBULUS. But let us grant that sensation needs no help of intelligence to perform its own function; nevertheless, when the perception that has caused an animal to distinguish between what is friendly and what is hostile is gone, what is it that from this time on remembers the distinction, fears the painful, and wants the beneficial ? And, if what it wants is not there, what is there in animals that devises means of acquiring it and providing lairs and hiding-places - both traps for prey and places of refuge from attackers ? And yet those very authors[*](The Stoics again; von Arnim, S.V.F. iii, p. 41, Chrysippus, frag. 173 of the Ethica.) rasp our ears by repeatedly defining in their Introductions [*](Or elementary treatises: titles used by Chrysippus (von Arnim, op. cit. ii, pp. 6 f.; iii, p. 196).) purpose as an indication of intent to complete,

design as an impulse before an impulse, preparation as an act before an act, and memory as an apprehension of a proposition in the past tense of which the present tense has been apprehended by perception. [*](That is, by sensation we apprehend the proposition Socrates is snub-nosed, by memory the proposition Socrates was snub-nosed. The literature on this complicated subject has been collected and analysed in Class. Rev. lxvi (1952), pp. 146 f.) For there is not one of these terms that does not belong to logic; and the acts are all present in all animals as, of course, are cognitions which, while inactive, they call notions, but when they are once put into action, concepts. And though they admit that emotions one and all are false judgements and seeming truths, [*](Cf. von Arnim, op. cit. i, pp. 50 f; iii, pp. 92 ff.; see also Mor. 449 c.) it is extraordinary that they obviously fail to note many things that animals do and many of their movements that show anger or fear or, so help me, envy or jealousy. They themselves punish dogs and horses that make mistakes, not idly but to discipline them; they are creating in them through pain a feeling of sorrow, which we call repentance.

Now pleasure that is received through the ears is a means of enchantment, while that which comes through the eyes is a kind of magic: they use both kinds against animals. For deer and horses[*](Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. xii. 44, 46; Antigonus, Hist. Mirab. 29.) are bewitched by pipes and flutes, and crabs[*](Dolphins also are caught by music: Pliny, Nat. Hist. xi. 137.) are involuntarily lured from their holes by lotus pipes e; it is also reported that shad will rise to the surface

and approach when there is singing and clapping.[*](Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. vi, 32; Athenaeus, 328 f, on the trichis, which is a kind of thrissa (cf. Athenaeus, 328 e); and see Mair on Oppian, Hal. i. 244 (L.C.L.).) The horned owl,[*](Cf. Mor. 52 b (where the L.C.L., probably wrongly, reads the ape); 705 a; Athenaeus, 390 f; Aelian, De Natura Animal. xv. 28; Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 68; Aristotle, Historia Animal. viii. 13 (597 b 22 ff.) and the other references of Hubert at Mor. 705 a and Gulick on Athenaeus, 629 f. Contrast Aelian, De Natura Animal. i, 39, on doves. Porphyry omits this sentence.) again, can be caught by the magic of movement, as he strives to twist his shoulders in delighted rhythm to the movements of men dancing before him.

As for those who foolishly affirm that animals do not feel pleasure or anger or fear or make preparations or remember, but that the bee as it were [*](A favourite expression of Aristotle’s; but it is the Stoics who are being reproved here (cf. von Arnim, S.V.F. ii, p. 240, Chrysippus, frag. 887). This seems to be the only appearance of the word in Plutarch, unless Pohlenz is right in conjecturing it at Mor. 600 f, or Rasmus at 1054 c in other Stoic quotations.) remembers and the swallow as it were prepares her nest and the lion as it were grows angry and the deer as it were is frightened-I don’t know what they will do about those who say that beasts do not see or hear, butas it were hear and see; that they have no cry but as it were; nor do they live at all but as it were. For these last statements (or so I believe) are no more contrary to plain evidence than those that they have made.