_Morals_, the first translation in this country was made by Philemon
Holland, M.D., London, 1603 and 1657. The next English version was
published in 1684-1694, “by several hands.” The fifth edition, “revised
and corrected from the many errors of the former edition,” appeared
in 1718. The latest English version is that of Professor Goodwin, of
Harvard University (1870), with an introduction by R. W. Emerson. It
is, for the most part, a reprint of the revision of 1718, and consists
of five octavo volumes. It is a matter equally for surprise and
regret that, in an age of so much literary, or at least publishing,
enterprise, a judicious selection from the productions of so estimable
a mind has never yet been attempted in a form accessible to ordinary
readers.[43]
In his _Symposiacs_, discussing (_Quest._ ii.), “whether the sea
or land affords the better food,” and summing up the arguments, he
proceeds:--
“We can claim no great right over land animals which are nourished
with the same food, inspire the same air, wash in and drink the
same water that we do ourselves; and when they are slaughtered
they make us ashamed of our work by their terrible cries; and
then, again, by living amongst us they arrive at some degree of
familiarity and intimacy with us. But sea creatures are altogether
strangers to us, and are brought up, as it were, in another world.
Neither does their voice, look, or any service they have done us
plead for their life. This kind of animals are of no use at all to
us, nor is there any obligation upon us that we should love them.
The element we inhabit is a hell to them, and as soon as ever they
enter upon it they die.”
We may infer that Plutarch advanced gradually to the perfect knowledge
of the truth, and it is probable that his essay on _Flesh-eating_
was published at a comparatively late period in his life, since in
some of his miscellaneous writings, in alluding to the subject,
he speaks in less decided and emphatic terms of its barbarism and
inhumanity: _e.g._, in his _Rules for the Preservation of Health_,
while recommending moderation in eating, and professing abstinence from
flesh, he does not so expressly denounce the prevalent practice. Yet he
is sufficiently pronounced even here in favour of the reformed diet on
the score of health:--
“Ill-digestion,” says he, “is most to be feared after flesh-eating,
for it very soon clogs us and leaves ill consequences behind it. It
would be best to accustom oneself _to eat no flesh at all_, for the
earth affords plenty enough of things fit not only for nourishment
but for delight and enjoyment; some of which you may eat without
much preparation, and others you may make pleasant by adding
various other things.”
That the non-Christian humanitarian of the first century was far
ahead--we will not say of his contemporaries, but of the common crowd
of writers and speakers of the present age in his estimate of the
just rights and position of the innocent non-human races--will be
sufficiently apparent from the following extract from his remarkable
essay entitled, _That the Lower Animals Reason_, to which Montaigne
seems to have been indebted. The essay is in the form of a dialogue
between Odysseus (Ulysses) and Gryllus, who is one of the transformed
captives of the sorceress Circe (see _Odyssey_ ix.) Gryllus maintains
the superiority of the non-human races generally in very many
qualities and in regard to many of their habits--_e.g._, in eating and
drinking:--
“Being thus wicked and incontinent in inordinate desires, it is no
less easy to be proved that men are more intemperate than other
animals even in those things which are necessary--_e.g._, in eating
and drinking--the pleasures of which we [the non-human races]
always enjoy with some benefit to ourselves. But you, pursuing
the pleasures of eating and drinking beyond the satisfaction of
nature, are punished with many and lingering diseases[44] which,
arising from the single fountain of superfluous gormandising,
fill your bodies with all manner of wind and vapours not easy for
purgation to expel. In the first place, all species of the lower
animals, according to their kind, feed upon one sort of food which
is proper to their natures--some upon grass, some upon roots,
and others upon fruits. Neither do they rob the weaker of their
nourishment. But man, such is his voracity, _falls upon all_ to
satisfy the pleasures of his appetite, tries all things, tastes all
things; and, as if he were yet to seek what was the most proper
diet and most agreeable to his nature, among all animals is the
only _all-devourer_.[45] He makes use of flesh _not out of want
and necessity_, seeing that he has the liberty to make his choice
of herbs and fruits, the plenty of which is inexhaustible; but
out of luxury and being cloyed with necessaries, he seeks after
impure and inconvenient diet, purchased by the slaughter of living
beings; by this showing himself more cruel than the most savage of
wild beasts. For blood, murder, and flesh are proper to nourish
the kite, the wolf, and the serpent: _to men they are superfluous
viands_. The lower animals abstain from most of other kinds and are
at enmity with only a few, and that only compelled by necessities
of hunger; but neither fish, nor fowl, nor anything that lives upon
the land escapes your tables, though they bear the name of humane
and _hospitable_.”
Reprobating the harshness and inhumanity of Cato the Censor, who is
usually regarded as the type of old Roman virtue, Plutarch, with his
accustomed good feeling, declares:--
“For my part, I cannot but charge his using his servants like
so many horses and oxen, or turning them off or selling them
when grown old, to the account of a mean and ungenerous spirit,
which thinks that the sole tie between man and man is interest or
necessity. But goodness moves in a larger sphere than [so-called]
justice. The obligations of law and equity reach only to mankind,
but kindness and beneficence should be extended to beings of every
species. And these always flow from the breast of a well-natured
man, as streams that flow from the living fountain.
A good man will take care of his horses and dogs, not only while
they are young, but when old and past service. Thus the people of
Athens, when they had finished the temple of _Hecatompedon_, set at
liberty the lower animals that had been chiefly employed in that
work, suffering them to pasture at large, free from any further
service.... We certainly ought not to treat living beings like
shoes or household goods, which, when worn out with use, we throw
away; and _were it only to learn benevolence to human kind_, we
should be compassionate to other beings. For my own part, I would
not sell even an old ox that had laboured for me; much less would
I remove, for the sake of a little money, a man, grown old in my
service, from his accustomed place--for to him, poor man, it would
be as bad as banishment, since he could be of no more use to the
buyer than he was to the seller. But Cato, as if he took a pride
in these things, tells us that, when Consul, he left his war-horse
in Spain, to save the public the charge of his freight. Whether
such things as these are instances of greatness or of littleness of
soul, let the reader judge for himself.”[46]
If we shall compare these sentiments of the pagan humanitarian with the
every-day practices of modern christian society in the matter, _e.g._,
of “knackers’ yards,” and other similar methods of getting rid of dumb
dependants after a life-time of continuous hard labour--perhaps of bad
usage, and even semi-starvation--the comparison scarcely will be in
favour of christian ethics. From the essay _On Flesh-Eating_ we extract
the principal and most significant passages:--
PLUTARCH--ESSAY ON FLESH-EATING.
“You ask me upon what grounds Pythagoras abstained from feeding
on the flesh of animals. I, for my part, marvel of what sort of
feeling, mind, or reason, that man was possessed who was the first
to pollute his mouth with gore, and to allow his lips to touch the
flesh of a murdered being: who spread his table with the mangled
forms of dead bodies, and claimed as his daily food what were but
now beings endowed with movement, with perception, and with voice.
“How could his eyes endure the spectacle of the flayed and
dismembered limbs? How could his sense of smell endure the horrid
_effluvium_? How, I ask, was his taste not sickened by contact with
festering wounds, with the pollution of corrupted blood and juices?
‘The very hides began to creep, and the flesh, both roast and
raw, groaned on the spits, and the slaughtered oxen were endowed,
as it might seem, with human voice.’[47] This is poetic fiction;
but the actual feast of ordinary life is, of a truth, a veritable
portent--that a human being should hunger after the flesh of oxen
actually bellowing before him, and teach upon what parts one should
feast, and lay down elaborate rules about joints and roastings and
dishes. The first man who set the example of this savagery is the
person to arraign; not, assuredly, that great mind which, in a
later age, determined to have nothing to do with such horrors.
“For the wretches who first applied to flesh-eating may justly be
alleged in excuse their utter resourcelessness and destitution,
inasmuch as it was not to indulge in lawless desires, or amidst the
superfluities of necessaries, for the pleasure of wanton indulgence
in unnatural luxuries that they [the primeval peoples] betook
themselves to carnivorous habits.
“If _they_ could now assume consciousness and speech they might
exclaim, ‘O blest and God-loved men who live at this day! What a
happy age in the world’s history has fallen to _your_ lot, you who
plant and reap an inheritance of all good things which grow for
you in ungrudging abundance! What rich harvests do you not gather
in? What wealth from the plains, what innocent pleasures is it not
in your power to reap from the rich vegetation surrounding you on
all sides! _You_ may indulge in luxurious food without staining
your hands with innocent blood. While as for us wretches, _our_
lot was cast in an age of the world the most savage and frightful
conceivable. _We_ were plunged into the midst of an all-prevailing
and fatal want of the commonest necessaries of life from the period
of the earth’s first genesis, while yet the gross atmosphere of the
globe hid the cheerful heavens from view, while the stars were yet
wrapped in a dense and gloomy mist of fiery vapours, and the sun
[earth] itself had no firm and regular course. Our globe was then
a savage and uncultivated wilderness, perpetually overwhelmed with
the floods of the disorderly rivers, abounding in shapeless and
impenetrable morasses and forests. Not for us the gathering in of
domesticated fruits; no mechanical instrument of any kind wherewith
to fight against nature. Famines gave us no time, nor could there
be any periods of seed-time and harvest.
“‘What wonder, then, if, contrary to nature, we had recourse to the
flesh of living beings, when all our other means of subsistence
consisted in wild corn [or a sort of grass--ἄγρωστιν], and the
bark of trees, and even slimy mud, and when we deemed ourselves
fortunate to find some chance wild root or herb? When we tasted
an acorn or beech-nut we danced with grateful joy around the
tree, hailing it as our bounteous mother and nurse. Such was the
gala-feast of those primeval days, when the whole earth was one
universal scene of passion and violence, engendered by the struggle
for the very means of existence.
“‘But what struggle for existence, or what goading madness has
incited _you_ to imbrue your hands in blood--you who have, we
repeat, a superabundance of all the necessaries and comforts of
existence? Why do you belie the Earth [τὶ καταψεύοεσθε τῆς Γῆς]
as though it were unable to feed and nourish you? Why do you
do despite to the bounteous [goddess] Ceres, and blaspheme the
sweet and mellow gifts of Bacchus, as though you received not a
sufficiency from them?
“‘Does it not shame you to mingle murder and blood with their
beneficent fruits? Other _carnivora_ you call savage and
ferocious--lions and tigers and serpents--while yourselves come
behind them in no species of barbarity. And yet for them murder is
the only means of sustenance; whereas to you it is a superfluous
luxury and crime.’
“For, in point of fact, we do not kill and eat lions and wolves,
as we might do in self-defence--on the contrary, we leave them
unmolested; and yet the innocent and the domesticated and helpless
and unprovided with weapons of offence--these we hunt and kill,
whom Nature seems to have brought into existence for their beauty
and gracefulness....
“Nothing puts us out of countenance [δυσωπεῖ], not the charming
beauty of their form, not the plaintive sweetness of their voice
or cry, not their mental intelligence [πανουργία ψυχῆς], not
the purity of their diet, not superiority of understanding. For
the sake of a part of their flesh only, we deprive them of the
glorious light of the sun--of the life for which they were born.
The plaintive cries they utter we affect to take to be meaningless;
whereas, in fact, they are entreaties and supplications and prayers
addressed to us by each which say, ‘It is not the satisfaction
of your real necessities we deprecate, but the wanton indulgence
[ὕβριν] of your appetites. Kill to eat, if you must or will, but do
not slay me that you may feed _luxuriously_.’
“Alas for our savage inhumanity! It is a terrible thing to see
the table of rich men decked out by those layers out of corpses
[νεκρόκοσμους], the butchers and cooks: a still more terrible sight
is the same table _after_ the feast--for the wasted relics are even
more than the consumption. These victims, then, have given up their
lives uselessly. At other times, from mere niggardliness, the host
will grudge to distribute his dishes, and yet he grudged not to
deprive innocent beings of their existence!
“Well, I have taken away the excuse of those who allege that they
have the authority and sanction of Nature. For that man is not,
by nature, carnivorous is proved, in the first place, by the
external frame of his body--seeing that to none of the animals
designed for living on flesh has the human body any resemblance. He
has no curved beak, no sharp talons and claws, no pointed teeth,
no intense power of stomach [κοιλίας εὐτονία] or heat of blood
which might help him to masticate and digest the gross and tough
flesh-substance. On the contrary, by the smoothness of his teeth,
the small capacity of his mouth, the softness of his tongue, and
the sluggishness of his digestive apparatus, Nature sternly forbids
him [ἐξομνύται] to feed on flesh.
“If, in spite of all this, you still affirm that you were intended
by nature for such a diet, then, to begin with, kill _yourself_
what you wish to eat--but do it yourself with your own _natural_
weapons, without the use of butcher’s knife, or axe, or club. No;
as the wolves and lions and bears themselves slay all they feed on,
so, in like manner, do you kill the cow or ox with a gripe of your
jaws, or the pig with your teeth, or a hare or a lamb by falling
upon and rending them there and then. Having gone through all these
preliminaries, _then_ sit down to your repast. If, however, you
wait until the living and intelligent existence be deprived of
life, and if it would disgust you to have to rend out the heart and
shed the life-blood of your victim, why, I ask, in the very face
of Nature, and in despite of her, do you feed on beings endowed
with sentient life? But more than this--not even, after your
victims have been killed, will you eat them just as they are from
the slaughter-house. You boil, roast, and altogether metamorphose
them by fire and condiments. You entirely alter and disguise the
murdered animal by the use of ten thousand sweet herbs and spices,
that your natural taste may be deceived and be prepared to take the
unnatural food. A proper and witty rebuke was that of the Spartan
who bought a fish and gave it to his cook to dress. When the latter
asked for butter, and olive oil, and vinegar, he replied, ‘Why, if
I had all these things, I should not have bought the fish!’
“To such a degree do we make luxuries of bloodshed, that we call
flesh ‘a delicacy,’ and forthwith require delicate sauces [ὄψων]
for this same flesh-meat, and mix together oil and wine and honey
and pickle and vinegar with all the spices of Syria and Arabia--for
all the world as though we were embalming a human corpse. After all
these heterogeneous matters have been mixed and dissolved and, in
a manner, corrupted, it is for the stomach, forsooth, to masticate
and assimilate them--if it can. And though this may be, for the
time, accomplished, the natural sequence is a variety of diseases,
produced by imperfect digestion and repletion.[48]
“Diogenes (the Cynic) had the courage, on one occasion, to swallow
a _polypus_ without any cooking preparation, to dispense with the
time and trouble expended in the kitchen. In the presence of a
numerous concourse of priests and others, unwrapping the morsel
from his tattered cloak, and putting it to his lips, ‘For your
sakes,’ cried he, ‘I perform this extravagant action and incur this
danger.’ A self-sacrifice truly meritorious! Not like Pelopidas,
for the freedom of Thebes, or like Harmodius and Aristogeiton,
on behalf of the citizens of Athens, did the philosopher submit
to this hazardous experiments; for _he_ acted thus that he might
_unbarbarise_, if possible, the life of human kind.
“Flesh-eating is not unnatural to our physical constitution only.
The mind and intellect are made gross by gorging and repletion;
for flesh-meat and wine may possibly tend to give robustness
to the body, but it gives only feebleness to the mind. Not to
incur the resentment of the prize-fighters [the _athletes_], I
will avail myself of examples nearer home. The wits of Athens,
it is well known, bestow on us Bœotians the epithets ‘gross,’
‘dull-brained,’ and ‘stupid,’ chiefly on account of our gross
feeding. We are even called ‘hogs.’ Menander nicknames us the
‘jaw-people’ [οἱ γνάθους ἔχοντες]. Pindar has it that ‘mind is a
very secondary consideration with them.’ ‘A fine understanding of
clouded brilliancy’ is the ironical phrase of Herakleitus....
“Besides and beyond all these reasons, does it not seem admirable
to foster habits of philanthropy? Who that is so kindly and gently
disposed towards beings of another species would ever be inclined
to do injury to his own kind? I remember in conversation hearing,
as a saying of Xenokrates, that the Athenians imposed a penalty
upon a man for flaying a sheep alive, and he who tortures a living
being is little worse (it seems to me) than he who needlessly
deprives of life and murders outright. We have, it appears, clearer
perceptions of what is contrary to propriety and custom than of
what is contrary to nature....
“Reason proves both by our thoughts and our desires that we are
(comparatively) new to the reeking feasts [ἕωλα] of kreophagy. Yet
it is hard, as says Cato, to argue with stomachs since they have
no ears; and the inebriating potion of Custom[49] has been drunk,
like Circe’s, with all its deceptions and witcheries. Now that men
are saturated and penetrated, as it were, with love of pleasure,
it is not an easy task to attempt to pluck out from their bodies
the flesh-baited hook. Well would it be if, as the people of Egypt
turning their back to the pure light of day disembowelled their
dead and cast away the offal, as the very source and origin of
their sins, we, too, in like manner, were to eradicate bloodshed
and gluttony from ourselves and purify the remainder of our lives.
If the irreproachable diet be impossible to any by reason of
inveterate habit, at least let them devour their flesh as driven
to it by hunger, not in luxurious wantonness, but with feelings of
shame. Slay your victim, but at least do so with feelings of pity
and pain, not with callous heedlessness and with torture. And yet
that is what is done in a variety of ways.
“In slaughtering swine, for example, they thrust red-hot irons into
their living bodies, so that, by sucking up or diffusing the blood,
they may render the flesh soft and tender. Some butchers jump upon
or kick the udders of pregnant sows, that by mingling the blood and
milk and matter of the _embryos_ that have been murdered together
in the very pangs of parturition, they may enjoy the pleasure of
feeding upon unnaturally and highly inflamed flesh![50] Again, it
is a common practice to stitch up the eyes of cranes and swans, and
shut them up in dark places to fatten. In this and other similar
ways are manufactured their dainty dishes, with all the varieties
of sauces and spices [καρυκείαις--Lydian sauces, composed of blood
and spices]--from all which it is sufficiently evident that men
have indulged their lawless appetites in the pleasures of luxury,
not for necessary food, and from no necessity, but only out of the
merest wantonness, and gluttony, and display....”[51]
Among the illustrious earlier contemporaries of Plutarch who practised
no less than preached rigid abstinence, Apollonius of Tyana, the
Pythagorean, one of the most extraordinary men of any age, deserves
particular notice. He came into the world in the same year with the
founder of Christianity, B.C. 4. The facts and fictions of his life we
owe to Philostratus, who wrote his memoirs at the express desire of the
Empress Julia Domna, the wife of Severus.
Apollonius, according to his biographer, came of noble ancestry. He
early applied himself to severe study at the ever memorable Tarsus,
where he may have known the great persecutor, and afterwards second
founder, of Christianity. Disgusted with the luxury of the people, he
soon exiled himself to a more congenial atmosphere, and applied himself
to the examination of the various schools of philosophy--the Epicurean,
the Stoic, the Peripatetic, &c.--finally giving the preference to the
Pythagorean. He embraced the strictest ascetic life, and travelled
extensively, visiting, in the first instance, Nineveh, Babylon, and, it
is said, India, and afterwards Greece, Italy, Spain, and Roman Africa
and Ethiopia. At the accession of Domitian, he narrowly escaped from
the hands of that tyrant, after having voluntarily given himself up
to his tribunal, by an exertion of his reputed supernatural power. He
passed the last years of his life at Ephesus, where, according to the
well-known story, he is said to have announced the death of Domitian
at the very moment of the event at Rome. His alleged miracles were so
celebrated, and so curiously resemble the Christian miracles, that they
have excited an unusual amount of attention.[52]
Unfortunately, the life by Philostratus, in accordance with the taste
of a necessarily uncritical age, is so full of the preternatural and
marvellous that the real fact that the pythagorean philosopher had
acquired and possessed extraordinary mental as well as moral faculties,
which might well be deemed supernatural at that period, is too apt to
be discredited. The Life was composed long after the death of the hero,
and thus a considerable amount of inventive license was possible to the
biographer; but that it rested upon an undoubted substratum of actual
occurrences will scarcely be disputed. There is one passage which
deserves to be transcribed as of wider application. The people of a
town in Pamphylia (in the Lesser Asia), where the great Thaumaturgist
chanced to be staying, were starving in the midst of plenty by the
selfish policy of the monopolists of grain, and, driven to desperation,
were on the point of attacking the responsible authorities. Apollonius,
at this crisis, wrote the following address, and gave it to the
magistrates to read aloud:--
“Apollonius to the Monopolists of Corn in Aspendos, greeting: The
Earth is the common mother of all, for she is just.[53] You are
unjust, for you have made her the mother of _yourselves only_.
If you will not cease from acting thus, I will not suffer you to
remain upon her.”
Philostratus assures us that “intimidated by these indignant words they
filled the market with grain, and the city recovered from its distress.”
VII.
TERTULLIAN. 160-240 (?) A.D.