7. AUTOBULUS. These things, dear friend, you utter as the opinion of those people. But we are not to allow philosophers a remedy to procure easy delivery, as they do to women that are subject to hard labors, merely that they may bring us forth justice without any pain or trouble. For the same persons, even in the greatest matters, will not allow to Epicurus so small and pitiful a thing as the slightest inclination of one only atom, for to make way for the stars and living creatures and Fortune to come into the world, and that thereby our free will might be saved. For we ought either to prove what is doubtful or to assume what of itself is manifest; so we ought not to take for granted this doctrine touching beasts as regards justice, unless it is either confessed or otherwise proved by demonstration. For justice has another way to establish itself, neither so steep nor so slippery, nor leading to the subversion of evident truths; but which, according to Plato’s instruction, my son and thy friend, Soclarus, has showed to such as are not captiously contentious but willing to learn. For certain it is, that both Empedocles and Heraclitus held it for a truth, that man could not be altogether cleared from injustice in dealing with beasts as he now does; often bewailing and exclaiming against Nature, as if she were nothing else but necessity and war, having neither any thing unmixed nor any thing truly pure, but still arriving at her end by many, and those unjust and unlawful passions. Whence they affirm that generation itself originally proceeded from injustice by the conjunction of immortal with mortal, and that the thing engendered is still contrary to Nature delighted with the parts of that which engenders, dismembered from the whole. But this seems to be too luxuriant and severe an accusation of Nature. For there is yet a more moderate excuse, which does not altogether deprive the beasts of reason, yet justifies the necessary and convenient use of them; which when the ancients introduced, they detested and utterly discountenanced voracious and voluptuous gluttony. Pythagoras also resumed the argument, teaching how we might reap the benefit of the creatures without doing injustice. For they do no injustice, that chastise and kill such savage beasts that are both hurtful to man and never will be tame. But taming such as are gentle and loving to men, they thereby make them assistant in the several uses to which they were ordained,— The horse and ass, that backs to load resign, And race of bulls, which, as Prometheus in Aeschylus[79] observes, Kind Heaven vouchsafed to men by toil distrest, With servile limbs his labors to assist.