On Affection for Offspring (intro-4)

This essay, or declamation, is clearly in an unfinished state throughout and a good deal is doubtless lost at the end, for the author has done little more with his subject than to show that φιλοστοργία [*] is more complete in man than in beasts.[*] The efforts of Döhner[*] and Weissenberger[*] to prove that the essay is not genuine have not been successful. Dohner is, further, quite wrong, as Patzig[*] and Weissenberger have shown, in assuming the work to be an epitome.

It is best regarded as an unfinished fragment, containing, so far as it goes, the rough and unrevised hand of Plutarch.

Dyroff’s[*] attempt to show that this work was composed before De Esu Carnium, De Sollertia Animalium, and Gryllus is not to be taken seriously: the grounds are too slight.

The text is very corrupt. The work is not listed in the Lamprias catalogue.

Trials of cases on appeal[*] before special arbitrators and the carrying of cases before foreign courts were first devised by the Greeks by reason of their mutual distrust, since they had need of the justice supplied by others than themselves, like any other non-indigenous necessity. Is it thus, then, that philosophers also, because of their disagreements with each other, refer some of their questions to the nature of irrational animals, as though to a foreign city, and submit the decision to the emotions and character and habits of these creatures as to a court that cannot be influenced or bribed? Or is this also a common charge against human depravity - that, being in doubt about the most necessary and important things, we seek among horses and dogs and birds how we ourselves should marry and beget and bring up children (as though we had no plain indication of Nature in ourselves); and that we term the traits which brute beasts have characters and emotions, and accuse our life of a great deviation

and departure from Nature, confused and disordered as we are at the very beginning concerning even the first principles? For in dumb animals Nature preserves their special characteristics pure and unmixed and simple, but in men, through reason and habit, they have been modified by many opinions and adventitious judgements so that they have lost their proper form and have acquired a pleasing variety comparable to the variety of perfumes made by the pharmacist on the basis of a single oil. And let us not wonder if irrational animals follow Nature more closely than rational ones; for animals are, in fact, outdone in this by plants, to which Nature has given neither imagination nor impulse, nor desire for something different, which causes men to shake themselves free from what Nature desires; but plants, as though they were fastened in chains, remain in the power of Nature, always traversing the one path along which Nature leads them. Yet in wild beasts versatility of reasoning and uncommon cleverness and excessive love of freedom are not too highly developed; and though they have irrational impulses and desires and often wander about on circuitous paths, they do not go far afield, but ride, as it were, at the anchor provided by Nature, who points out to them the straight way, as to an ass which proceeds under bit and bridle. But in man ungoverned reason is absolute master, and, discovering now one way of deviation and innovation and now another, has left no clear or certain vestige of Nature visible.[*]

Observe to what extent there exists in animals

conformity to nature in regard to their marriages. In the first place, they do not wait for laws against celibacy or late wedlock, as did the citizens of Lycurgus[*] and Solon, [*] nor fear loss of civil rights because of childlessness, nor pursue the honours of the ius trium liberorum ,[*] as many Romans do when they marry and beget children, not that they may have heirs, but that they may inherit. In the next place, the male does not consort with the female during all seasons, for the end and aim is not pleasure, but procreation and the begetting of offspring; therefore it is in the season of spring, which has procreative breezes[*] and a temperature suitable to intercourse,[*] that the female, rendered submissive and desirable, comes to consort with the male, exulting, as she does, in the pleasing odour of her flesh and the peculiar adornment[*] of her body, and filled with dew and clean grass[*]; but when she perceives that she is pregnant and sated, she modestly retires and takes thought for the birth and safety of her offspring. But it is impossible to recount the procedure in a manner worthy of the subject, except to say that each of the pair is as one in their affection for their offspring, in their forethought, their endurance, and their self-control. Further, though we call the bee wise and believe that it

Makes the yellow honey its care,[*]

flattering the saccharine quality of its sweetness which tickles our palates, yet we overlook the wisdom and artifice of the other creatures which is manifested in the bearing and the nurture of offspring. As, for example, the king-fisher[*] after conception makes her nest by gathering the thorns of the sea-needle and interweaving and joining them together, and makes it round and oblong in form, like a fisherman’s creel; and, packing the thorns closely together with the most exact jointure and density, submits it to the dashing of the waves so that, being gradually beaten upon and riveted together, the hard-packed surface may become water-proof; and it does become hard to divide with iron or stone. And what is more wonderful, the mouth of the nest is so exactly fitted to the size and measure of the king-fisher that no other creature, either larger or smaller, may enter, and, so they say, that it will not admit even the most minute drops of sea-water.[*]

And sea-dogs[*] are a very good example, for they bring forth their young alive within their bodies,[*] but permit their offspring to emerge and forage, and then take them back again and enfold them in their vitals and let them sleep there.

And the she-bear,[*] the most savage and sullen of beasts, brings forth her young formless and without visible joints, and with her tongue, as with a tool, she moulds into shape their skin[*]; and thus she is thought, not only to bear, but to fashion her cub.

And in Homer[*] the lion -

Whom hunters meet leading his young within

A wood; he glares with valour and draws down

His eye-lids till they hide his eyes -

does he look like a beast that has any notion of making terms with the hunters for his children’s lives? For, in general, the love of animals for their children makes the timid bold, the lazy energetic, the voracious sparing; like the bird in Homer[*] which brings to her nestlings

Whatever morsels she can catch, though she

Fares ill herself,

for she feeds her young at the cost of her own hunger, and, though she has laid hold of food for her belly, she withholds it and presses it tightly with her beak, lest she gulp it down unawares; or

As a bitch bestrides her tender pups, and barks

At one she does not know, and longs to fight,[*]

acquiring, as it were, a second courage in her fear for her young.

And partridges,[*] when, accompanied by their

young, they are being pursued, allow the fledglings to fly ahead and attempt to escape, and contrive to fix the hunter’s attention on themselves by wheeling close and, when they are almost captured, fly off and away, then again remain at rest and place themselves within the reach of the hunter’s hope, until, by so exposing themselves to danger for their nestlings’ safety, they have led on the hunters to a considerable distance.

And we have before our eyes every day the manner in which hens[*] care for their brood, drooping their wings for some to creep under, and receiving with joyous and affectionate clucks others that mount upon their backs or run up to them from every direction; and though they flee from dogs and snakes if they are frightened only for themselves, if their fright is for their children, they stand their ground and fight it out beyond their strength.

Are we, then, to believe that Nature has implanted these emotions in these creatures because she is solicitous for the offspring of hens and dogs and bears, and not, rather, because she is striving to make us ashamed and to wound us, when we reflect that these instances are examples to those of us who would follow the lead of Nature, but to those who are callous, as rebukes for their insensibility, by citing which they[*] disparage human nature as being the only kind that has no disinterested affection and that does not know how to love without prospect of gain? In our theatres, indeed, people applaud the verse of the poet who said,[*]

What man will love his fellow-man for pay?

And yet, according to Epicurus,[*] it is for pay that a father loves his son, a mother her child, children their parents; but if beasts could come to understand speech and someone should bring together to a common theatre horses and cows and dogs and birds and should revise this speech and say, Dogs do not love their pups, nor horses their colts, nor birds their nestlings, for pay, but gratuitously and naturally, it would be recognized by the emotions of them all that this was well and truly spoken. For it is shameful - great Heaven! - that the begetting and the pains of travail and the nurture of beas ts should be Nature and a free gift, but that those of men should be loans and wages and caution-money, all given on condition of a return![*]

But such a statement is neither true nor worth the hearing. For just as in uncultivated plants, such as wild vines and figs and olives, Nature has implanted the principles, though crude and imperfect, of cultivated fruits, so on irrational animals she has bestowed a love of offspring, though imperfect and insufficient as regards the sense of justice and one which does not advance beyond utility; but in the case of man, a rational and social animal, Nature, by introducing him to a conception of justice and law and to the worship of the gods and to the founding of cities and to human kindness, has furnished noble and beautiful and fruitful seeds of all these in the joy we have in our children and our love of them, emotions which accompany their first beginnings; and these qualities are found in the very constitution of their bodies. For although Nature is everywhere exact and workmanlike

with no deficiency or superfluity, and has, as Erasistratus[*] said, no trumpery about her; yet when it comes to the processes of procreation, it is impossible to describe them in a fitting manner, and perhaps it would not be decent to fix our attention too precisely upon the names and designations of these forbidden topics, but it is proper that we should apprehend the admirable adaptation of those hidden and concealed parts to the functions of procreation and bringing to birth. However, the production[*] and administering of milk is sufficient proof of Nature’s foresight and care. For in women the amount of blood exceeds the use for it because of the sluggishness and paucity of their breath and, coming to the surface, wanders at large and burdens them; at other times it is Nature’s custom and care to discharge the blood at monthly periods by opening canals and channels for it, to lighten and cleanse the rest of the body and in season to render the womb fertile ground for ploughing, as it were, and sowing. But when the womb receives the seed as it encounters it and enfolds it and it has taken root[*] there (for the umbilical cord grows at first in the womb, as Democritus[*] says, as an anchorage against the swell and drift, a cable and vine for the fruit now conceived that is to be), Nature shuts the monthly canals of purification and, taking the drifting blood, uses it for nourishment and irrigates[*] the embryo, [*] which already is beginning to be formed and shaped, until, having been carried the number of months proper to its growth within the womb, it needs other nourishment and abiding-place. At that time, then, Nature, more carefully than any gardener or irrigator, turns and changes the blood from one use to another and has in readiness subterranean springs, as it were, of a fresh-flowing stream; and the springs receive the blood in no perfunctory or unemotional manner, but are even able, by the gentle heat and soft womanliness of respiration, to digest, mollify, and change it; for such a disposition and temper does the breast have within it. Yet there are no outflowing streams of milk nor spouts which discharge it all at once,[*] but the breast terminates in flesh that is full of springs and can filter the milk gently through minute passage-ways; and it thus gives a store of food that is comfortable for the infant’s mouth and pleasant for it to touch and to grasp.

But there would be no benefit in these many kinds of equipment for procreation, or in such ways and means, such zeal and forethought, if Nature had not implanted in mothers affection and care for their offspring.

There is nothing more wretched than a man,[*]

Of all that breathes and creeps upon the earth -

the poet tells no falsehood if it is about a new-born babe that he speaks.[*] For there is nothing so imperfect, so helpless, so naked, so shapeless, so foul, as man observed at birth, to whom alone, one might almost say, Nature has given not even a clean passage to the light[*]; but, defiled with blood and covered with filth and resembling more one just slain than one just born, he is an object for none to touch or lift up or kiss or embrace except for someone who loves with a natural affection. Therefore, while the other animals have their dugs hanging loose beneath the belly, in women they grow above on the breast where mothers can kiss and embrace and fondle the infant, the inference being that the end and aim of bearing and rearing a child is not utility, but affection.

Carry the discussion back to primitive mankind, to those whose women were the first to bear, and whose men were the first to see a child born; they had neither any law which bade them rear their children, nor any expectation of gratitude or of receiving the wages of maintenance lent to their children when they were young. [*] Nay, I should rather be inclined to affirm that these mothers were hostile and malicious toward their children, since great dangers and travail had come to them from child-birth:

As when a sharp pang pierces a woman in labour,

A pang which the Eileithyiae of child-bed send,

The daughters of Hera, who bring the bitter pangs -

these lines, women tell us, were written, not by Homer,[*] but by an Homerid[*] after child-birth or while she was still in the throes of it and had the pain of travail, alike bitter and sharp, actually present in her entrails. But even then the affection for offspring implanted by Nature would bend and lead the mother: still hot and suffering and shaken with her pangs, she did not neglect or avoid her child, but turned to it and smiled at it and took it up and kissed it, though she reaped nothing sweet or profitable therefrom, but received it with pain and suffering, and with tatters of swaddling-clothes

Thus warming and caressing it, both night And day she passes in alternate toil. [*]

For what pay or advantage were these services performed by those ancient parents? Nor is there any for those of our day, since their expectations are uncertain and far off. He that plants a vineyard in the vernal equinox gathers the grapes in the autumnal; he that sows wheat when the Pleiades set reaps it when they rise; cattle and horses and birds bring forth young at once ready for use; but as for man, his rearing is full of trouble, his growth is slow, his attainment of excellence is far distant and most fathers die before it comes. Neocles did not live to see the Salamis of Themistocles nor Miltiades the Eurymedon of Cimon; nor did Xanthippus ever hear Pericles harangue the people, nor did Ariston hear Plato expound philosophy; nor did the fathers of Euripides and Sophocles come to know their sons’ victories; they but heard them lisping and learning to speak and witnessed their revellings and drinking-bouts and love-affairs, as they indulged in such follies as young men commit; so that of all Evenus[*] wrote the only line that is praised or remembered is

For fathers a child is always fear or pain.

Yet none the less fathers do not cease rearing children and, most of all, those who least need them. For it is ridiculous if anyone thinks that the rich sacrifice and rejoice when sons are born to them because they will have someone to support them and bury them-unless, by Heaven, it is for lack of heirs that they bring up children, since it is impossible to find or happen upon anyone willing to accept another’s property!

Not sand or dust or feathers of birds of varied note

Could heap up so great a number[*]

as is the number of those seeking inheritances.[*]

The sire of fifty daughters,[*] Danaüs;

but if he had been childless, he would have had more heirs, and heirs unlike his own. For sons feel no gratitude, nor, for the sake of inheriting, do they pay court or show honour, knowing that they receive the inheritance as their due. But you hear the words of strangers clustering around the childless man, like those famous verses of the comic poet,[*]

O Demos, judge one case, then to your bath; Gorge, guzzle, stuff, and take three obols’ pay.

And the remark of Euripides,[*]

Money it is that finds out friends for men

And holds the greatest power among mankind,

is not a simple and general truth, but applies to the childless: it is these whom rich men feast, whom great men court, for these alone do advocates plead gratis.

A rich man with an unknown heir’s a power.[*]

Many, at any rate, who had many friends and much honour, the birth of one child has made friendless and powerless. Therefore not even toward the acquisition of power is there any aid to be derived from children, but the whole force of Nature exists no less in man than in beasts.[*]