De sollertia animalium

SOCLARUS. Well, Autobulus, you may count me also as one who believes your statements; yet on comparing the ways of beasts with human customs and lives, with human actions and manner of living, I find not only many other defects in animals, but this especially: they do not explicitly aim at virtue,[*](On animals possessing aretê see Aelian’s preface to the first book of De Natura Animal.; cf. also Mor. 986 f infra; al. ) for which purpose reason itself exists; nor do they

make any progress in virtue or have any bent for it; so that I fail to see how Nature can have given them even elementary reason, seeing that they cannot achieve its end.

AUTOBULUS. But neither does this, Soclarus, seem absurd to those very opponents of ours; for while they postulate that love of one’s offspring[*](See Mor. 495 c and the whole fragment, De Amore Prolis (493 a - 497 e).) is the very foundation of our social life and administration of justice, and observe that animals possess such love in a very marked degree, yet they assert and hold that animals have no part in justice. Now mules[*](Cf. Aristotle, De Generatione Animal. ii, 7 (746 b 15 ff.), ii. 8 (747 a 23 ff.); for Aristotle’s criticism of Empedocles’ theory see H. Cherniss, Aristotle’s Criticism of the Presocratics, p. 143, n. 573. Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 173, mentions some cases of the fertility of mules, see also Cicero, De Divinatione, i. 36; ii. 49; Herodotus, iii. 151 ff.) are not deficient in organs; they have, in fact, genitals and wombs and are able to use them with pleasure, yet cannot attain the end of generation. Consider another approach: is it not ridiculous to keep affirming that men like Socrates and Plato[*](Cf. Cicero, De Finibus, iv. 21.) are involved in vice no less vicious than that of any slave you please, that they are just as foolish and intemperate and unjust, and at the same time to stigmatize the alloyed and imprecise virtue of animals as absence of reason rather than as its imperfection or weakness ? And this, though they acknowledge that vice is a fault of reason and that all animals are infected with vice: many, in fact, we observe to be guilty of cowardice and intemperance, injustice and malice. He, then, who holds that what is not fitted by nature to receive the perfection of reason does not even

receive any reason at all is, in the first place, no better than one who asserts that apes are not naturally ugly or tortoises naturally slow for the reason that they are not capable of possessing beauty or speed. In the second place, he fails to observe the distinction which is right before his eyes: mere reason is implanted by nature, but real and perfect reason[*](Cf. Diogenes Laertius, vii. 54.) is the product of care and education. And this is why every living creature has the faculty of reasoning; but if what they seek is true reason and wisdom, not even man may be said to possess it.[*](Cf. Cicero, De Natura Deorum, ii. 13. 34.) For as one capacity for seeing or flying differs from another (hawks and cicadas do not see alike, nor do eagles and partridges fly alike), so also not every reasoning creature has in the same way a mental dexterity or acumen that has attained perfection. For just as there are many examples in animals of social instincts and bravery and ingenuity in ways and means and in domestic arrangements, so, on the other hand, there are many examples of the opposite: injustice, cowardliness, stupidity.[*](Cf. 992 d infra.) And the very factor which brought about our young men’s contest to-day provides confirmation. It is on an assumption of difference that the two sides assert, one that land animals, the other that sea animals, are naturally more advanced toward virtue. This is clear also if you contrast hippopotamuses[*](Cf. Herodotus, ii. 71; Aristotle, Historia Animal. ii. 7 (502 a 9-15), though the latter passage may be interpolated. Porphyry reads contrast river-horses with land-horses. ) with storks[*](Cf. Aristotle, op. cit. ix. 13 (615 b 23 ff.); Aelian, De Natura Animal. iii. 23; Philo, 61 (p. 129).): the latter support their fathers, while the former kill them[*](And eat them: Aelian, De Natura Animal. vii. 19.) in order to consort with their mothers. The same is true if you compare doves[*](Cf. Aristotle, Historia Animal. vi. 4 (562 b 17); Aelian, De Natura Animal. iii. 45.) with partridges[*](Cf. Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 8 (613 b 27 ff.); Aelian, De Natura Animal. iii. 16, and Cf. iv. 1. 16; of peacocks in Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 161.); for the partridge cock steals the eggs and destroys them since the female will not consort with him while she is sitting, whereas male doves assume a part in the care of the nest, taking turns at keeping the eggs warm and being themselves the first to feed the fledglings; and if the female happens to be away for too long a time, the male strikes her with his beak and drives her back to her eggs or squabs. And while Antipater[*](Von Arnim, S.V.F. iii, p. 251, Antipater of Tarsus, frag. 47. We know from Plutarch’s Aetia Physica, 38 that Antipater wrote a book on animals. On the other hand, Dyroff (Blätter f. d. bay. Gymn. xxiii, 1897, p. 403) argued for Antipater of Tyre; he believed, in fact, that the present work was mainly directed against this Antipater. Schuster, op. cit. p. 77, has shown this to be unlikely.) was reproaching asses and sheep for their neglect of cleanliness, I don’t know how he happened to overlook lynxes and swallows[*](Cf. Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 7 (612 b 30 f.); Plutarch, Mor. 727 d-e; Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 92; Philo, 22 (p. 111).); for lynxes dispose of their excrement by concealing and doing away with it, while swallows teach their nestlings to turn tail and void themselves outward.

AUTOBULUS. Why, moreover, do we not say that one tree is less intelligent than another, as a sheep is by comparison with a dog; or one vegetable more cowardly than another, as a stag is by comparison with a lion ? Is the reason not that, just as it is impossible to call one immovable object slower than another, or one dumb thing more mute than another, so among all the creatures to whom Nature has not given the faculty of understanding, we cannot say that one is more cowardly or more slothful or more intemperate ? Whereas it,

is the presence of understanding, of one kind in one animal, of another kind in another, and in varying degree, that has produced the observable differences.