Beasts are rational (8)

GRYLLUS. Though men are so vile and incontinent where the desires I have spoken of are concerned, they can be proved to be even more so in the case of essential desires, being here far inferior to animals in temperance.[*] These are the desires for food and drink, in which we beasts always take our pleasure along with some sort of utility; whereas you, in your pursuit of pleasure rather than natural nourishment, are punished by many serious ailments which, welling up from one single source, the surfeit of your bodies, fill you with all manner of flatulence that is difficult to purge.[*] In the first place each species of animal has one single food proper to it, grass or some root or fruit. Those that are carnivorous resort to no other kind of nourishment, nor do they deprive those weaker than themselves of sustenance; but the lion lets the deer, and the wolf lets the sheep, feed in its natural pasture. But man in his pleasures is led astray by gluttony to everything edible[*]; he tries and tastes everything as if he had not yet come to recognize what is suitable and proper for him; alone of all creatures he is omnivorous.[*]

In the first place his eating of flesh is caused by no lack of means or methods,[*] for he can always in season harvest and garner and gather in such a succession of plants and grains as will all but tire him out with their abundance; but driven on by luxurious desires and satiety with merely essential nourishment, he pursues illicit food, made unclean by the slaughter of beasts; and he does this in a much more cruel way than the most savage beasts of prey. Blood and gore and raw flesh are the proper diet of kite and wolf and snake; to man they are an appetizer.[*] Then, too, man makes use of every kind of food and does not, like beasts, abstain from most kinds and consequently make war on a few only that he must have for food. In a word, nothing that flies or swims or moves on land has escaped your so-called civilized and hospitable tables.