Indupedita fuis fatalibus omnia vinclis *.

-All things remain

Bound and entangled in one fatal chain.

There is fome difference; there are feveral ranks and degrees, but it is under the aspect of one and the fame

nature.

➖➖res quæque fuo ritu procedit, et omnes
Federe natura certo difcrimine fervant.

All things, arifing from their proper caufe,
Remain diftinct, and follow nature's laws.

Man must be confined and reftrained within the barriers
of this polity. The miferable creature is really not in
a condition to put one leg over the fence: he is fet-
tered and embarraffed, he is subject to the fame obliga-
tion with the other creatures of his rank, and his state
is very mean, without any prerogative, or true and fub-
ftantial pre-eminence. That which he afcribes to him-
felf in his own fancy and opinion, has no reality. And
if it be the real cafe, that he alone of all living creatures
hath this privilege of imagination, and this irregularity
of fentiments, reprefenting to him that which is, that
which is not, and the falfe and the true, as he pleases;
it is an advantage very dearly bought, and for which
he has very little reafon to value himself, fince from
hence arifes the principal fource of the evils that op-
prefs him, fin, fick nefs, irrefolution, affliction, and
defpair. I fay, therefore, (to return to
my fubject) that there is no appearance
of reafon to fuppofe that the beafts
fhould, by a natural and forced inclination, do the
fame things that we do by our choice and endea-
vour. We ought from like effects to conclude like
faculties, and from richer effects, richer faculties; and,
by confequence, to confefs, that this fame reafon, this
fame method, by which we operate, is common alfo

Animals free

agents as well as mankind,

Lucr. lib. v. ver. 874.

Lucr. lib. v. ver, 921, 922,

to the animals, or fome other that is better. Why fhould we imagine this natural constraint in them, while we experience no fuch effect from it in ourselves? Confidering, moreover, that it is more honourable to be guided, and obliged to act regularly by a natural and inevitable difpofition, and more approaching to that of the divine Being, than to act regularly by a fortuitous liberty; and more fafe to truft the reins of our conduct to nature than to ourfelves. The vanity of our prefumption is the reafon that we had rather afcribe our fufficiency to our own ftrength, than to the bounty of nature; and that we enrich the other animals with the bounties of nature, and renounce them in their favour, purely for the fake of honouring and ennobling ourfelves with goods acquired; a humour which I take to be very filly, for I would as much value favours that were entirely my own by nature, as thofe that I acquire by education. We cannot enjoy greater happiness than to be the favourite of God and nature.

The Thracians, when they purpose to pass over The fox's facul- any frozen river, turn out a fox before ty of reasoning, them, which, when he comes to the bank,

lays his ear down to the ice to liften if he can hear the noife of the current from a remote or nearer diftance; and, according as he thereby finds the ice to be more or lefs thick, he draws back or goes forwird. Now fhould we fee a fox do thus, thould we not have ground to conclude, that he reafoned juft in the fame manner as ourfelves; and that it is a reafoning and confequence derived from natural fenfe, or a perception in the fox, that what makes a noise moves, that what moves is not congealed, that what is not congealed is liquid, and that what is liquid yields to weight? For to afcribe this only to the quicknefs of the fenfe of hearing without reafoning, and making an inference, is an argument that cannot be admitted. In the fame manner are we to judge of the many various tricks and inventions, by which the Plutarch. de Solertia Animalium, &c. cap. 12. of Amyot's tranflation.

beafts

beafts fecure themfelves from the plots we form to furprise them.

Men flaves to other men, as

pleasure; it is but well as the

brutes are.

If we think to make any advantage, even of this argument, that it is in our power to feize them, to employ them in our fervice, and to use them at our pleasure; it is but still the fame advantage that we take one of another. We have our flaves upon this condition. And were not the Climacidæ, women of Syria that crouched to the ground on their hands and feet to serve as a * footstool, or a ftep ladder, for the ladies to get into their coaches, inftances of this observation? The greatest part of free perfons furrender their life and being to the power of another, for very trivial advantages. The wives and concubines of the Thracians contend who fhall be chofen to be flain upon the tombs of their hufbands. Have tyrants ever failed of finding men enough entirely at their devotion and difpofal? What armies have bound themfelves after this manner to their generals! The form of the oath, in this fevere school of fencers, who were to fight it out to the last, was in the fe terms: "We fwear to fuffer "ourselves to be chained, burned, wounded, and "killed with the fword, and to endure all that true

gladiators fuffer from their mafter, moft religiously engaging both bodies and fouls in his fervice."

Ure meum, fi vis, flammâ caput, et pete ferro
Corpus, et intorto verbere terga feca ‡.

Stab me, or lafh me till my fhoulders bleed,
Or, with the red-hot iron, burn my head.

Funeral obfe

This was an obligation indeed, and yet there was one year, in which 10,000 entered into it, and thereby loft their lives. When the Scy- quies of the Scythians interred their kings, they ftrangled thian kings. upon his body the most favoured of his concubines, his

Herodot. lib. v. P. 33TM,

Plutarch, chap. 3. in his difcourfe how to distinguish the flatterer from the friend. Tibullus, lib. i. eleg. x. ver. 21, 22. cup

cup-bearer, the mafter of his horfe, his chamberlain, the gentleman-ufher of his chamber, and cook *. And, upon his anniverfary, they killed fifty horfes, mounted by fifty pages, whom they impaled alive, and there left them, ftuck by way of ftate, round his tomb.

The men who ferve us come off cheaper, though What care men they are not treated with all that nicety take of animals. and favour, with which we treat our hawks, horfes, and dogs. How anxious are we for their good? I do not think, that the lowest degree of flaves would willingly do that for their masters, which even princes think it an honour to do for their beafts. Diogenes, feeing his relations folicitous to redeem him from fervitude, "They are fools, faid he, it is that which "treats and nourishes me, and that ferves me." And they who maintain beafts, may be faid, rather to serve them, than be ferved by them. And yet the beafts are in this refpect the more generous, that never did a lion ferve another lion, nor one horfe fubmit to another for want of fpirit. As we go to the chace of beafts, fo do tygers and lions to the chace of men; and they do the fame execution one upon the other, dogs upon hares, pikes upon tenches, fwallows upon flies, and fparrowhawks upon blackbirds and larks.

-Serpente ciconia pullos

Nutrit, et inventâ per devia rura lacertâ

Et leporem, aut capream, famulæ Jovis, et generofæ
In faltu venantur aces ‡.

The fork her young ones nourishes with snakes
And lizards found in bye-ways and in lakes;
Jove's bird, and others of the nobler kind,
Hunt in the woods the hare and kid to find.

We divide the quarry, as well as the labour and pains, with our hawks and hounds. And above Amphipolis,

Herodot, lib. iv p. 280.

↑ Diogenes Laertius in the life of Diogenes the Cynic, lib. v. fect. 75. I Juv. Sat. xiv. ver. 74, &c.

in Thrace, the falconers divide the booty betwixt themfelves and their wild hawks, into two equal fhares; juft as along the Palus Mootis, if the fifherman does not leave an equal fhare of what he catches to the wolves, they go iminediately and tear his nets to pieces.

mals in hunting.

As we have a fort of fishing, which is managed more by cunning than force, namely, angling Subtlety of aniwith the hook and line, so the like is to be seen among the animals Ariftotle fays, that the cuttle-fifh cafts a long gut from its neck like a line, which it lets out and draws in at pleafure; and that, as foon as it perceives any of the fmall fish approaching, it gives it leave to nibble the end of this gut, while it hides itself in the fand, or mud, and draws it to him gently, till the little fish is fo near, that, with one fpring, it can make a prey of it.

a crcature in

The frength of man inferior to

that of ani

mals..

With refpect to ftrength, there is not the world expofed to fo many injuries as man. Not to mention a whale, an elephant, a crocodile, and fuch fort of animals, of which one alone is enough to put many men to flight; a fwarm of lice put an end to the dictatorship of Sylla, and the heart and life of a great and triumphant emperor was the breakfast of a little worm.

human knowBeafts diftinguifh what may be of use to them in their mala

dies.

Why do we boaft, that it is only for ledge and learning to diftinguish things ufeful to life, and of fervice in ficknels, from those that are not fo, and to know the virtue of rhubarb and the polypody? When we fee the goats of Candia, after being wounded by an arrow, run and fingle out dittany, among a million of herbs, fit for their cure: when we fee the tortoife, after eating a viper, fearch immediately for marjoram to purge itfelf; when we jee the dragon rub and clear its eyes with fennel; the ftorks give themselves clyfters with the water of the fea, and elephants in battle not only pluck out

the