De sollertia animalium

SOCLARUS. You seem to me to be very much in the right, for the Stoics and Peripatetics are led to affirm the contrary upon this supposition, that justice could have no certain original, but would be altogether incomprehensible and inexistent if all brute creatures should partake

of reason. For either of necessity we must do a very great piece of injustice when we devour and feed upon them; or if we forbear the use of them, it will be impossible for us to live, or rather we shall in some measure live the lives of beasts, rejecting the use of brute creatures. I pass by those innumerable myriads of nomades and Troglodytes that know no other food but flesh. But as for us that seem to live lovingly and in friendship together, what necessity would there be of laboring on the earth, toiling upon the sea, or mining in the mountains, what ornament would there be in our life, if it were so that we must be bound to live, as it would then become us, not only without injury but rather with all civility and humanity toward all the sorts of beasts, as being our fellow rational creatures? We have no cure, no remedy for an unquestionable necessity that deprives us either of life or justice, unless we observe that ancient bound and dispensation which, according to Hesiod, distinguishing natures and separating every kind by themselves, commands

The fish, wild beasts, and all the winged fowl,

To prey upon their kinds without control,

For among them no law nor justice reigns;

Only by justice man from man abstains.

[*](Hesiod, Works and Days, 275.)

And therefore, as brutes can extend no act of justice to us, so neither can we commit any act of injustice against them. Which argument they who reject have left us no benefit of life, nor any the smallest entrance for justice into the world.