What then (will it be objected) is the necessity of this natural
internecine warfare of animals, and also of men? First, animals have to
devour each other in order to renew themselves; they could not, indeed,
last eternally, even if they were not killed. Is there any reason to
complain because, being already condemned to death, as they are, they
should find an end which is useful to other beings? What objection can
there be to their mutually devouring each other, in order to be reborn
under other forms? It is as if on the stage an actor who is thought to
be killed, goes to change his clothing, and returns under another mask.
Is it objected that he was not really dead? Yes indeed, but dying
is no more than a change of bodies, just as the comedian changes his
costume, or if the body were to be entirely despoiled, this is no more
than when an actor, at the end of a drama, lays aside his costume, only
to take it up again when once more the drama begins. Therefore, there
is nothing frightful in the mutual transformation of animals into each
other. Is it not better for them to have lived under this condition,
than never to have lived at all? Life would then be completely absent
from the universe, and life could no longer be communicated to other
beings. But as this universe contains a multiple life, it produces
and varies everything during the course of its existence; as it were
joking with them, it never ceases to beget living beings, remarkable
by beauty and by the proportion of their forms. The combats in which
mortal men continually fight against each other, with a regularity
strongly reminding of the Pyrrhic dances (as thought Plato[65]),
clearly show how all these affairs, that are considered so serious, are
only children's games, and that their death was nothing serious. To die
early in wars and battles is to precede by only a very little time the
unescapable fate of old age, and it is only an earlier departure for
a closer return. We may be comforted for the loss of our possessions
during our lifetime by observing that they have belonged to others
before us, and that, for those who have deprived us thereof, they form
but a very fragile possession, since they, in turn, will be bereft
thereof by others; and that, if they be not despoiled of their riches,
they will lose still more by keeping them.[66] Murders, massacres, the
taking and pillaging of towns should be considered as in the theatre we
consider changes of scene and of personages, the tears and cries of the
actors.[67]