Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 5 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"Plutarch
Philosophy
Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 5 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"
Plutarch
Classical literature; Essays; Ethics; Philosophy
3. And what meal is not expensive? That for which no animal is put
to death. Shall we reckon a soul to be a small expense. I will not
say perhaps of a mother, or a father, or of some friend, or child,
as Empedocles did; but one participating of feeling, of seeing, of
hearing, of imagination, and of intellection; which each animal hath
received from Nature for the acquiring of what is agreeable to it, and
the avoiding what is disagreeable. Do but consider this with yourself
now, which sort of philosophers render us most tame and civil, they
who bid people to feed on their children, friends, fathers, and wives,
when they are dead; or Pythagoras and Empedocles, that accustom men to
be just towards even the other members of the creation. You laugh at a
man that will not eat a sheep: but we (they will say again)—when we see
you cutting off the parts of your dead father or mother, and sending
it to your absent friends, and calling upon and inviting your present
friends to eat the rest freely and heartily—shall we not smile? Nay,
peradventure we offend at this instant time while we touch these books,
without having first cleansed our hands, eyes, feet, and ears; if it
be not (by Jupiter) a sufficient purgation of them to have discoursed
of these matters in potable and fresh language (as Plato speaketh),
thereby washing off the brackishness of hearing. Now if a man should
set these books and discourses in opposition to each other, he will
find that the philosophy of the one sort suits with the Scythians,
Sogdians, and Melanchlaenians, of whom Herodotus’s relation is scarce
believed; but the sentiments of Pythagoras and Empedocles were the laws
and customs of the ancient Grecians.
4. Who then were the first authors of this opinion, that we owe no
justice to dumb animals?
Who first beat out accursed steel,
And made the lab’ring ox a knife to feel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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