De sollertia animalium

SOCLARUS. Your inference seems quite justified. For the Stoics[*](Von Arnim, S.V.F. iii, p. 90.) and Peripatetics strenuously argue on the other side, to the effect that justice could not then come into existence, but would remain completely without form or substance, if all the beasts partake of reason. For[*](From this point to the end of chapter 6 (964 c) the text is quoted by Porphyry, De Abstinentia, i. 4-6 (pp. 88-89, ed. Nauck); cf. the note on 959 f supra.) either we are necessarily unjust if we do not spare them; or, if we do not take them for food, life becomes impracticable or impossible; in a sense we shall be living the life of beasts once we give up the use of beasts.[*](Cf. Mor. 86 d.) I omit the numberless hosts of Nomads and Troglodytes who know no other food but flesh. As for us who believe our lives to be civilized and humane, it is hard to say what pursuit on land or sea, what aerial art,[*](That is beasts, fish, and fowl in earth, sea, and air.) what refinement of living, is left to us if we are to learn to deal innocently and considerately with all creatures, as we are bound to if they possess reason and are of one stock with us. So we have no help or

cure for this dilemma which either deprives us of life itself or of justice, unless we do preserve that ancient limitation and law by which, according to Hesiod,[*](Works and Days, 277-279; Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. vi. 50; Mair on Oppian, Hal. ii. 43.) he who distinguished the natural kinds and gave each class its special domain:

1. To fish and beasts and winged birds allowed
2. Licence to eat each other, for no right
3. Exists among them; right, he gave to men

for dealing with each other. Those who know nothing of right action toward us can receive no wrong from us either.[*](This seems to have been Plutarch’s own attitude toward the question, at least later on in life; see Life of Cato Maior, v. 2 (339 a).) For those who have rejected this argument have left no path, either broad or narrow, by which justice may slip in.