Whether land or sea animals are cleverer (6-8)

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.

AUTOBULUS. This, my friend, has been spoken from the heart. [*] We certainly must not allow philosophers, as though they were women in difficult labour, to put about their necks a charm for speedy delivery so that they may bring justice to birth for us easily and without hard labour. For they themselves do not concede to Epicurus,[*] for the sake of the highest considerations, a thing so small and trifling as the slightest deviation of a single atom-which would permit the stars and living creatures to slip in by chance and would preserve from destruction the principle of free will. But, seeing that they bid him demonstrate whatever is not obvious or take as his starting-point something that is obvious, how are they in any position to make this statement about animals[*] a basis of their own account of justice, when it is neither generally accepted nor otherwise demonstrated by them?[*] For justice has another way to establish itself, a way which is neither so treacherous nor so precipitous, nor is it a route lined with the wreckage of obvious truths. It is the road which, under the guidance of Plato,[*] my son and your companion,[*] Soclarus, points out to those who have no love of wrangling, but are willing to be led and to learn. For certain it is that Empedocles[*] and Heraclitus[*] accept as true the charge that man is not altogether innocent of injustice when he treats animals as he does; often and often do they lament and exclaim against Nature, declaring that she is Necessity and War, that she contains nothing unmixed and free from tarnish, that her progress is marked by many unjust inflictions. As an instance, say. even birth itself springs from injustice, since it is a union of mortal with immortal, and the offspring is nourished unnaturally on members torn from the parent.

These strictures, however, seem to be unpalatably strong and bitter; for there is an alternative, an inoffensive formula which does not, on the one hand, deprive beasts of reason, yet does, on the other, preserve the justice of those who make fit use of them. When the wise men of old had introduced this, gluttony joined luxury to cancel and annul it; Pythagoras,[*] however, reintroduced it, teaching us how to profit without injustice. There is no injustice, surely, in punishing and slaying animals that are anti-social and merely injurious, while taming those that are gentle and friendly to man and making them our helpers in the tasks for which they are severally fitted by nature[*]:

Offspring of horse and ass and seed of bulls

which Aeschylus’[*] Prometheus says that he bestowed on us

To serve us and relieve our labours;

and thus we make use of dogs as sentinels and keep herds of goats and sheep that are milked and shorn.[*] For living is not abolished nor life terminated when a man has no more platters of fish or pate de foie gras or mincemeat of beef or kids’ flesh for his banquets[*] - or when he no longer, idling in the theatre or hunting for sport, compels some beasts against their will to stand their ground and fight, while he destroys others which have not the instinct to fight back even in their own defence. For I think sport should be joyful and between playmates who are merry on both sides, not the sort of which Bion[*] spoke when he remarked that boys throw stones at frogs for fun, but the frogs don’t die for fun, but in sober earnest.[*] Just so, in hunting and fishing, men amuse themselves with the suffering and death of animals, even tearing some of them piteously from their cubs and nestlings. The fact is that it is not those who make use of animals who do them wrong, but those who use them harmfully and heedlessly and in cruel ways.

SOCLARUS. Restrain yourself, Autobulus, and turn off the flow of these accusations.[*] I see a good many gentlemen approaching who are all hunters; you will hardly convert them and you needn’t hurt their feelings.

AUTOBULUS. Thanks for the warning. Eubiotus, however, I know quite well and my cousin Ariston, and Aeacides and Aristotimus here, the sons of Dionysius of Delphi, and Nicander, the son of Euthydamus, all of them expert, as Homer[*] expresses it, in the chase by land - and for this reason they will be on Aristotimus’ side. So too yonder comes Phaedimus with the islanders and coast-dwellers about him, Heracleon from Megara and the Euboean Philostratus,

Whose hearts are on deeds of the sea.[*]

And here is my contemporary Optatus: like Diomedes, it is

Hard to tell the side on which he ranges,[*]

for with many a trophy from the sea, many likewise from the chase on the mountain, he has glorified [*] the goddess[*] who is at once the Huntress and Dictynna. It is evident that he is coming to join us with no intention of attaching himself to either side. Or am I wrong, my dear Optatus, in supposing that you will be an impartial and neutral umpire between the young men ?

OPTATUS. It is just as you suppose, Autobulus. Solon’s[*] law, which used to punish those who adhered to neither side in a factious outbreak, has long since fallen into disuse.

AUTOBULUS. Come over here, then, and take your place beside us so that, if we need evidence, we shall not have to disturb the tomes of Aristotle,[*] but may follow you as expert and return a true verdict on the arguments.

SOCLARUS. Well then, my young friends, have you reached any agreement on procedure ?

PHAEDIMUS. We have, Soclarus, though it occasioned considerable controversy; but at length, as Euripides[*] has it,

The lot, the child of chance,

made arbiter, admits into court the case of the land animals before that of creatures from the sea.

SOCLARUS. The time has come, then, Aristotimus, for you to speak and us to hear.