Nothing that Plutarch says exhibits in a more striking light the humaneness of his disposition than his exhortations to the kind treatment of brutes. He believes that the good man is kind to his beast. He regards it a duty to care for the horse and the dog that have served him well, when they become old and useless. He seems to think that animals are not without a measure of reason and that they have to a limited extent, the power to decide between right and wrong. Though possessed of only a modicum of intelligence, this at least cannot be entirely denied to them, any more than it can be denied to a bad man. A certain measure of reason is the gift of nature; perfect and virtuous reason is the result of practice and instruction. The reasoning powers of many animals are, to an extent, on a level with those of man; they differ not so much in quality as in quantity. It is right, therefore, to use but not to abuse them. Cruelty to animals is evidence of a base heart. Those who treat them harshly usually accentuate their bad traits in their dealings with men. Our treatment of animals is, therefore, in some sort and often to a considerable extent, an index of how we treat our fellow beings. Plutarch finds the lower animals in some respects more rational than men. They never eat or drink more than enough to satisfy hunger and thirst; nor do they give way to any unnatural or excessive appetites. He is somewhat inclined to condemn the use of animal food; but, at any rate, animals must not be cruelly dealt with to make them more palatable, nor put to death by lingering and inhuman methods. He had in view more particularly some of the practices prevalent in Rome in his day,—practices that were, in truth, horrible in the extreme. It is no wonder that he names them only to condemn them. The extreme modernness of Plutarch in this matter becomes the more strikingly evident when we remember that classical antiquity not only very seldom has a kind word for irrational creatures, but was wont to treat them with extreme harshness. This was particularly the case among the Romans.