A good man will take care of his horses and dogs, not only while they are young, but when old and past service. Thus the people of Athens, when they had finished the temple of _Hecatompedon_, set at liberty the lower animals that had been chiefly employed in that work, suffering them to pasture at large, free from any further service.... We certainly ought not to treat living beings like shoes or household goods, which, when worn out with use, we throw away; and _were it only to learn benevolence to human kind_, we should be compassionate to other beings. For my own part, I would not sell even an old ox that had laboured for me; much less would I remove, for the sake of a little money, a man, grown old in my service, from his accustomed place--for to him, poor man, it would be as bad as banishment, since he could be of no more use to the buyer than he was to the seller. But Cato, as if he took a pride in these things, tells us that, when Consul, he left his war-horse in Spain, to save the public the charge of his freight. Whether such things as these are instances of greatness or of littleness of soul, let the reader judge for himself.”[46] If we shall compare these sentiments of the pagan humanitarian with the every-day practices of modern christian society in the matter, _e.g._, of “knackers’ yards,” and other similar methods of getting rid of dumb dependants after a life-time of continuous hard labour--perhaps of bad usage, and even semi-starvation--the comparison scarcely will be in favour of christian ethics. From the essay _On Flesh-Eating_ we extract the principal and most significant passages:-- PLUTARCH--ESSAY ON FLESH-EATING. “You ask me upon what grounds Pythagoras abstained from feeding on the flesh of animals. I, for my part, marvel of what sort of feeling, mind, or reason, that man was possessed who was the first to pollute his mouth with gore, and to allow his lips to touch the flesh of a murdered being: who spread his table with the mangled forms of dead bodies, and claimed as his daily food what were but now beings endowed with movement, with perception, and with voice.