Whether land or sea animals are cleverer (3-6)

AUTOBULUS.[*] But who ever, my dear Soclarus, maintained that, while rationality exists in the universe, there is nothing irrational ? For there is a plentiful abundance of the irrational in all things that are not endowed with a soul; we need no other sort of counterpart for the rational: everything that is soulless, since it has no reason or intelligence, is by definition in opposition to that which, together with a soul, possesses also reason and understanding. Yet suppose someone were to maintain that nature must not be left maimed, but that that part of nature which, is endowed with a soul should have its irrational as well as its rational aspect, someone else is bound to maintain that nature endowed with a soul must have both an imaginative and an unimaginative part, and both a sentient part and an insentient. They want nature, they say, to have these counteractive and contraposed positives and negatives of the same kind counterbalanced, as it were. But if it is ridiculous to require an antithesis of sentient and insentient within the class of living things, or an antithesis of imaginative and unimaginative, seeing that it is the nature of every creature with a soul to be sentient and imaginative from the hour of its birth, so he, also, is unreasonable who demands a division of the living into a rational and an irrational part - and that, too, when he is arguing with men who believe that nothing is endowed with sensation which does not also partake of intelligence and that there is no living thing which does not naturally possess both opinion and reason, just as it has sensation and appetite. For nature, which, they[*] rightly say, does everything with some purpose and to some end, did not create the sentient creature merely to be sentient when something happens to it. No, for there are in the world many things friendly to it, many also hostile; and it could not survive for a moment if it had not learned to give the one sort a wide berth while freely mixing with the other. It is, to be sure, sensation that enables each creature to recognize both kinds; but the acts of seizing or pursuing that ensue upon the perception of what is beneficial, as well as the eluding or fleeing of what is destructive or painful, could by no means occur in creatures naturally incapable of some sort of reasoning and judging, remembering and attending. Those beings, then, which you deprive of all expectation, memory, design, or preparation, and of all hopes, fears, desires, or griefs - they will have no use for eyes or ears either, even though they have them. Indeed, it would be better to be rid of all sensation and imagination that has nothing to make use of it, rather than to know toil and distress and pain while not possessing any means of averting them.

There is, in fact, a work of Strato,[*] the natural philosopher, which proves that it is impossible to have sensation at all without some action of the intelligence. Often, it is true, while we are busy reading, the letters may fall on our eyes, or words may fall on our ears, which escape our attention since our minds are intent on other things; but later the mind recovers, shifts its course, and follows up every detail that had been neglected; and this is the meaning of the saying[*]:

Mind has sight and Mind has hearing;

Everything else is deaf and blind,

indicating that the impact on eyes and ears brings no perception if the understanding is not present. For this reason also King Cleomenes, when a recital made at a banquet was applauded and he was asked if it did not seem excellent, replied that the others must judge, for his mind was in the Peloponnesus. So that, if we are so constituted that to have sensation we must have understanding, then it must follow that all creatures which have sensation can also understand.

AUTOBULUS. But let us grant that sensation needs no help of intelligence to perform its own function; nevertheless, when the perception that has caused an animal to distinguish between what is friendly and what is hostile is gone, what is it that from this time on remembers the distinction, fears the painful, and wants the beneficial ? And, if what it wants is not there, what is there in animals that devises means of acquiring it and providing lairs and hiding-places - both traps for prey and places of refuge from attackers ? And yet those very authors[*] rasp our ears by repeatedly defining in their Introductions [*] purpose as an indication of intent to complete, design as an impulse before an impulse, preparation as an act before an act, and memory as an apprehension of a proposition in the past tense of which the present tense has been apprehended by perception. [*] For there is not one of these terms that does not belong to logic; and the acts are all present in all animals as, of course, are cognitions which, while inactive, they call notions, but when they are once put into action, concepts. And though they admit that emotions one and all are false judgements and seeming truths, [*] it is extraordinary that they obviously fail to note many things that animals do and many of their movements that show anger or fear or, so help me, envy or jealousy. They themselves punish dogs and horses that make mistakes, not idly but to discipline them; they are creating in them through pain a feeling of sorrow, which we call repentance.

Now pleasure that is received through the ears is a means of enchantment, while that which comes through the eyes is a kind of magic: they use both kinds against animals. For deer and horses[*] are bewitched by pipes and flutes, and crabs[*] are involuntarily lured from their holes by lotus pipes e; it is also reported that shad will rise to the surface and approach when there is singing and clapping.[*] The horned owl,[*] again, can be caught by the magic of movement, as he strives to twist his shoulders in delighted rhythm to the movements of men dancing before him.

As for those who foolishly affirm that animals do not feel pleasure or anger or fear or make preparations or remember, but that the bee as it were [*] remembers and the swallow as it were prepares her nest and the lion as it were grows angry and the deer as it were is frightened-I don’t know what they will do about those who say that beasts do not see or hear, butas it were hear and see; that they have no cry but as it were; nor do they live at all but as it were. For these last statements (or so I believe) are no more contrary to plain evidence than those that they have made.

SOCLARUS. Well, Autobulus, you may count me also as one who believes your statements; yet on comparing the ways of beasts with human customs and lives, with human actions and manner of living, I find not only many other defects in animals, but this especially: they do not explicitly aim at virtue,[*] for which purpose reason itself exists; nor do they make any progress in virtue or have any bent for it; so that I fail to see how Nature can have given them even elementary reason, seeing that they cannot achieve its end.

AUTOBULUS. But neither does this, Soclarus, seem absurd to those very opponents of ours; for while they postulate that love of one’s offspring[*] is the very foundation of our social life and administration of justice, and observe that animals possess such love in a very marked degree, yet they assert and hold that animals have no part in justice. Now mules[*] are not deficient in organs; they have, in fact, genitals and wombs and are able to use them with pleasure, yet cannot attain the end of generation. Consider another approach: is it not ridiculous to keep affirming that men like Socrates and Plato[*] are involved in vice no less vicious than that of any slave you please, that they are just as foolish and intemperate and unjust, and at the same time to stigmatize the alloyed and imprecise virtue of animals as absence of reason rather than as its imperfection or weakness ? And this, though they acknowledge that vice is a fault of reason and that all animals are infected with vice: many, in fact, we observe to be guilty of cowardice and intemperance, injustice and malice. He, then, who holds that what is not fitted by nature to receive the perfection of reason does not even receive any reason at all is, in the first place, no better than one who asserts that apes are not naturally ugly or tortoises naturally slow for the reason that they are not capable of possessing beauty or speed. In the second place, he fails to observe the distinction which is right before his eyes: mere reason is implanted by nature, but real and perfect reason[*] is the product of care and education. And this is why every living creature has the faculty of reasoning; but if what they seek is true reason and wisdom, not even man may be said to possess it.[*] For as one capacity for seeing or flying differs from another (hawks and cicadas do not see alike, nor do eagles and partridges fly alike), so also not every reasoning creature has in the same way a mental dexterity or acumen that has attained perfection. For just as there are many examples in animals of social instincts and bravery and ingenuity in ways and means and in domestic arrangements, so, on the other hand, there are many examples of the opposite: injustice, cowardliness, stupidity.[*] And the very factor which brought about our young men’s contest to-day provides confirmation. It is on an assumption of difference that the two sides assert, one that land animals, the other that sea animals, are naturally more advanced toward virtue. This is clear also if you contrast hippopotamuses[*] with storks[*]: the latter support their fathers, while the former kill them[*] in order to consort with their mothers. The same is true if you compare doves[*] with partridges[*]; for the partridge cock steals the eggs and destroys them since the female will not consort with him while she is sitting, whereas male doves assume a part in the care of the nest, taking turns at keeping the eggs warm and being themselves the first to feed the fledglings; and if the female happens to be away for too long a time, the male strikes her with his beak and drives her back to her eggs or squabs. And while Antipater[*] was reproaching asses and sheep for their neglect of cleanliness, I don’t know how he happened to overlook lynxes and swallows[*]; for lynxes dispose of their excrement by concealing and doing away with it, while swallows teach their nestlings to turn tail and void themselves outward.

AUTOBULUS. Why, moreover, do we not say that one tree is less intelligent than another, as a sheep is by comparison with a dog; or one vegetable more cowardly than another, as a stag is by comparison with a lion ? Is the reason not that, just as it is impossible to call one immovable object slower than another, or one dumb thing more mute than another, so among all the creatures to whom Nature has not given the faculty of understanding, we cannot say that one is more cowardly or more slothful or more intemperate ? Whereas it, is the presence of understanding, of one kind in one animal, of another kind in another, and in varying degree, that has produced the observable differences.

SOCLARUS. Yet it is astonishing how greatly man surpasses the animals in his capacity for learning and in sagacity and in the requirements of justice and social life.

AUTOBULUS. There are in fact, my friend, many animals wliich surpass all men, not only in bulk and swiftness, but also in keen sight and sharp hearing[*]; but for all that man is not blind or crippled or earless. We can run, if less swiftly than deer; and see, if less keenly than hawks; nor has Nature deprived us of strength and bulk even though, by comparison with, the elephant and the camel, we amount to nothing in these matters.[*] In the same way, then, let us not say of beasts that they are completely lacking in intellect and understanding and do not possess reason even though their understanding is less acute and their intellect inferior to ours; what we should say is that their intellect, is feeble and turbid, like a dim and clouded eye. And if I did not expect that our young men, learned and studious as they are, would very shortly present us here, one with a large collection of examples drawn from the land, the other with his from the sea, I should not have denied myself the pleasure of giving you countless examples of the docility and native capacity of beasts - of which fair Rome[*] has provided us a reservoir from which to draw in pails and buckets, as it were, from the imperial spectacles. Let us leave this subject, therefore, fresh and untouched for them to exercise their art upon in discourse.

AUTOBULUS. There is, however, one small matter which I should like to discuss with you quietly. It is my opinion that each part and faculty has its own particular weakness or defect or ailment which appears in nothing else, as blindness in the eye, lameness in the leg, stuttering in the tongue. There can be no blindness in an organ which was not created to see, or lameness in a part which was not designed for walking; nor would you ever describe an animal without a tongue as stuttering, or one voiceless by nature as inarticulate. And in the same way you would not call delirious or witless or mad anything that was not endowed by Nature with reason or intelligence or understanding; for it is impossible to ail where you have no faculty of which the ailment is a deficiency or loss or some other kind of impairment. Yet certainly you have encountered mad dogs, and I have also known of mad horses; and there are some who say that cattle and foxes also go mad.[*] But dogs will do, since no one questions the fact in their case, which provides evidence that the creature possesses reason and a by no means despicable intellectual faculty. What is called rabies and madness is an ailment of that faculty when it becomes disturbed and disordered. For we observe no derangement either of the dogs’ sight or of their hearing; yet, just as when a human being suffers from melancholy or insanity, anyone is absurd who does not admit that it is the organ that thinks and reasons and remembers which has been displaced or damaged (we habitually say, in fact, of madmen that they are not themselves, but have fallen out of their wits), just so, whoever believes that rabid dogs have any other ailment than an affliction of their natural organ of judgement and reason and memory so that, when this has become infected with disorder and insanity, they no longer recognize beloved faces and shun their natural haunts - such a man, I say, either must be disregarding the evidence or, if he does take note of the conclusion to which it leads, must be quarrelling with the truth.[*]

SOCLARUS. Your inference seems quite justified. For the Stoics[*] 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[*] 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.[*] 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,[*] 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,[*] he who distinguished the natural kinds and gave each class its special domain:

To fish and beasts and winged birds allowed

Licence to eat each other, for no right

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.[*] For those who have rejected this argument have left no path, either broad or narrow, by which justice may slip in.