Part 5

With good sense and in that spirit of compromise which is really the basis of morality, Plutarch argued that cruelty to animals does not lie in the use but in the abuse of them; it is not cruel to kill them if they are incompatible with our own existence; it is not cruel to tame and train to our service those made by nature gentle and loving towards man which become the companions of our toil according to their natural aptitude. “Horse and ass are given to us,” as Prometheus says, “to be submissive servants and fellow-workers; dogs to be guardians and watchers, goats and sheep to give us milk and wool.” (Cow’s milk seems to have been rarely drunk, as is still the case in the Mediterranean islands and in Greece.)

“The Stoics,” says Plutarch, “made sensibility towards animals a preparation to humanity and compassion because the gradually formed habit of the lesser affections is capable of leading men very far.” In the “Lives” he insists on the same point: “Kindness and beneficence should be extended to creatures of every species, and these still flow from the breast of a well-natured man as streams that issue from the living fountain. A good man will take care of his horses and dogs not only when they are young, but when old and past service.... We certainly ought not to treat living creatures 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 merciful to other creatures. For my own part I would not sell even an old ox.”

Here I may say that Plutarch should have thanked Fate which made him a philosopher and not a farmer. For how, alas, can the farmer escape from becoming the accomplice of that which the Italian poet apostrophizes in the words—

“Natura, illaudabil maraviglia, Che per uccider partorisci e nutri!”

How can well-cared-for old age be the lot of more than a very few of the animals that serve us so faithfully? The exception must console us for the rule. The beautiful story of one such exception is told by both Plutarch and Pliny the Elder. When Pericles was building the Parthenon a great number of mules were employed in drawing the stones up the hill of the Acropolis. Some of them became too old for the work, and these were set at liberty to pasture at large. But one old mule gravely walked every day to the stone-yard and accompanied, or rather led, the procession of mule-carts to and fro. The Athenians were delighted with its devotion to duty, and decided that it should be supported at the expense of the State for the rest of its days. According to Pliny, the mule of the Parthenon lived till it had attained its eightieth year, a record that seems startling even having regard to the proverbial longevity of pensioners. Plutarch does not mention it, perhaps, because he had some doubts about its accuracy. In other respects the story may be accepted as literally true; and does it not do us good to think of it, as we look at the most glorious work of man’s hands bathed in the golden afterglow? Does it not do us good to think that at the zenith of her greatness Athens

“... Mother of arts And eloquence, native to famous wits”

stooped—nay, rose—to generous appreciation of the willing service of an old mule?

In dealing with animal psychology Plutarch makes a strong point of the inherent improbability that, while feeling and imagination are the common share of all animated beings, reason should be apportioned only to a single species. “How can you say such things? Is not every one convinced that no being can feel without also possessing understanding, that there is not a single animal which has not a sort of thought and reason just as he comes into the world with senses and instinct?” Nature, which is said to make all things from one cause and to one end, has not given sensibility to animals simply in order that they should be capable of sensations. Since some things are good for them, and others bad, they would not exist for a single instant if they did not know how to seek the good and shun the bad. The animal learns by his senses what things are good and what are bad for him, but when, in consequence of these indications, of his senses, it is a question of taking and seeking what is useful and of avoiding and flying from what is harmful, these same animals would have no means of action if Nature had not made them up to a certain point capable of reason, of judgment, of memory, and of attention. Because, if you completely deprived them of the spirit of conjecture, memory, foresight, preparation, hope, fear, desire, grief, they would cease to derive the slightest utility from the eyes or ears which they possess. Plutarch might have added that a mindless animal would resemble not a child or a savage, but an idiot. He does point out that they would be better off with no senses at all than with the power of feeling and no power of acting upon it. But, he adds, could sensation exist without intelligence? He quotes a line from I do not know what poet:—

“The spirit only hears and sees—all else Is deaf and blind.”

If we look with our eyes at a page of writing without seizing the meaning of a word of it, because our thoughts are preoccupied, is it not the same as if we had never seen it? But even were we to admit that the senses suffice to their office, would that explain the phenomena of memory and foresight? Would the animal fear things, not present, which harm him, or desire things, not present, which are to his advantage? Would he prepare his retreat or shelter or devise snares by which to catch other animals? Only one theory can be applied to mind in man and mind in animals.

It will be seen from this summary that Plutarch traversed the whole field of speculation on animal intelligence which has not really extended its boundaries since the time when he wrote, though it is possible that we are now on the verge, if not of new discoveries, at least of the admission of a new point of view. The study of the dual element in man, the endeavour to establish a line of demarcation between the conscious and subliminal self, may lead to the inquiry, how far the conscious self corresponds with what was meant, when speaking of animals, by “reason,” and the subliminal self with what was meant by “instinct”? But the use of a new terminology would not alter the conclusion: call it reason, consciousness, spirit; some of it the “paragon of animals” shares with his poor relations. The case is put in a homely way but not without force by the heroine of a forgotten novel by Lamartine: the speaker is an old servant who is in despair at losing her goldfinch: “Ah! On dit que les bêtes n’ont pas l’âme,” she says. “Je ne veux pas offenser le bon Dieu, mais si mon pauvre oiseau n’avait pas d’âme, avec quoi done n’aurait-il tant aimée? Avec les plumes ou avec les pattes, peut-être?”

Plutarch reviews—to reject—the “Automata” argument, which had already some supporters. Certain naturalists, he says, try to prove that animals feel neither pleasure nor anger nor yet fear; that the nightingale does not meditate his song, that the bee has no memory, that the swallow makes no preparations, that the lion never grows angry, nor is the stag subject to fear. Everything, according to these theorists, is merely delusive appearance. They might as well assert that animals cannot see or hear; that they only appear to see or hear; that they have no voice, only the semblance of a voice; in short, that they are not alive but only seem to live.

The moral aspects of any problem are those which to a moralist seem the most important, and Plutarch did not seek to deny the force of the objection: If virtue be the true aim of reason, how can Nature have bestowed reason on creatures which cannot direct it to its true object? But he denied the postulate that animals have no ethical potentialities. If the love of men for their children is granted to be the corner-stone of all human society, shall we say that there is no merit in the affection of animals for their offspring? He sums up the matter by remarking that the limitation of a faculty does not show that it does not exist. To pretend that every being not endowed at birth with perfect reason is, by its nature, incapable of reason of any kind, would be to ignore the fact that although reason is a natural gift the degree in which it is possessed by any individual depends on his training and on his teachers. Perfect reason is possessed by none because none has perfect rectitude and moral excellence.

Animals exhibit examples of sociability, courage, resource, and again, of cowardice and viciousness. Why do we not say of one tree that it is less teachable than another, as we say that a sheep is less teachable than a dog? It is, of course, because plants cannot think, and where the faculty of thought is wholly wanting, there cannot be more or less quickness or slowness, more or less of good qualities or of bad.

Yet it must be allowed that man’s intelligence is amazingly superior to that of animals. But what does that prove? Do not some animals leave man far behind in the keenness of their sight and the sharpness of their hearing? Shall we say, therefore, that man is blind or deaf? We have some strength in our hands and in our bodies although we are not elephants or camels. In the same way, we should be careful not to infer that animals lack all reasoning faculties from the fact that their intelligence is duller and more defective than man’s. “Boatfuls” of true stories can be cited to show the docility and special aptitudes of the different children of creation. And a very amusing occupation it is, says Plutarch, for young people to collect such stories. In the course of his work, he sets them a good example, for he brings together a real “boatful” of anecdotes of clever beasts, but at this point he contents himself with observing that madness in dogs and other animals would be alone sufficient to show that they had some mind: otherwise, how could they go out of it?

The stoics who taught the strictest humanity to animals rejected, nevertheless, the supposition that animals had reason, for how, they asked, can such a theory be reconciled with the idea of eternal justice? Would it not make abstinence from their flesh imperative and entail consequences which would make our life impracticable? If we were to give up using animals for our own purposes, we should be reduced ourselves almost to the condition of brutes. “What works would be left for us to do by land or sea, what industries to cultivate, what embellishments of our way of living, if we regarded animals as reasonable beings and our fellow-creatures, and hence adopted the rule (which, clearly, would be only proper) to do them no harm and to study their convenience.”

Many a sensitive modern soul has pondered over this crux without finding a satisfactory solution. Plutarch says that Empedocles and Heraclites admitted the injustice, and laid it to the door of Nature which permits or ordains a state of war and necessity, in which nothing is accomplished without the weaker going to the wall. For himself, he would propose to those “who, instead of disputing, gently follow and learn” the better way out of the difficulty—which was introduced by the Sages of Antiquity, then long lost, and found again by Pythagoras. This better way is to use animals as our helpers but to refrain from taking life.

Plutarch here evades a stumbling-block which he does not remove. The dialogue, as it has come down to us, breaks off suddenly after one final objection: how can beings have reason which have no notion of God? Some scholars imagine that Plutarch hurried the dialogue to a close because this query completely baffled him; others (and they are the majority) attribute the abrupt finish to the loss of the concluding part. Would Plutarch have contented himself with citing the analogy of young children who, although not without the elements of reason, know very little of theology, or would not he rather have contended with Celsus, that animals _do_ possess religious knowledge? If he took the last course, it may well be that the disappearance of the end of the dialogue was not accidental. At Ravenna there is a terrible mosaic, alive with wrath and energy, which shows a Christ we know not (for He looks like a grand Inquisitor) thrusting into the flames heretical books. As I looked at it, I thought how many valuable classical works, vaguely suspected on the score of faith or morals, must have shared the fate of “unorthodox” polemics in the merry bonfires which this mosaic holds up for imitation!

The argument “that it sounds unnatural to ascribe reason to creatures ignorant of God,” suggests familiarity with a passage in Epictetus (Plutarch’s contemporary), where he says that man alone was made to have the understanding which recognises God—a recognition which he elsewhere explains by the hypothesis that every man has in him a small portion of the divine. Having this intuitive sense, man is bound, without ceasing, to praise his Creator, and, since others are blind and neglect to do it, Epictetus will do it on behalf of all: “for what else can I do, a lame old man, than sing hymns to God? If I was a nightingale, I should do the part of a nightingale; if I were a swan, I would do like a swan; but now I am a _rational creature_, and I ought to praise God: this is my work; I do it, nor will I desert this post so long as I am allowed to keep it, and I exhort you to join in this song.”

The words are among the sweetest and most solemn that ever issued from human lips; yet those who care to pursue the subject farther may submit that there was some one before Epictetus, who called upon the beasts, the fishes and the fowls to join him in blessing the name of the Lord, and there was some one after him who commanded the birds of the air to sing the praises of their Maker and Preserver! It is strange that, despite the hard-and-fast line which the moulders of the Catholic Faith were at pains to trace between man and beast, if we would find the most emphatic assertion of their common privilege of praising God, we must leave the Pagan world and take up the Bible and the “Fioretti” of St. Francis!

Of the anecdotes with which Plutarch enlivens his pages, he says himself that he puts on one side fable and mythology, and limits his choice to the “all true” category, and if he appears to be at times a little credulous, one may well believe that he is always candid. Just as in his “Lives” he tried to ennoble his readers by making noble deeds interesting, so in his writings on animals, he tried to make people humane by making his dumb clients interesting. He did not start with thinking the task an easy one, for he was convinced that man is more cruel than the most savage of wild beasts. But he aims at pouring, if not a full draught of mercy, at least some drops, into the heart that never felt a pang, the mind that never gave a thought. Many of his stories are taken straight from the common street life of the Rome of his day, as that of the elephant which passed every day along a certain street where the schoolboys teased it by pricking its trunk with their writing stylets (men may come and go, but the small boy is a fixed quantity!). At last, the elephant, losing patience, picked up one of his tormentors and hoisted him in the air; a cry of horror rose from the spectators, no one doubted that in another moment the child would be dashed to the ground. But the elephant set the offender down very gently and walked away, thinking, no doubt, that a good fright had been a sufficient punishment. The Syrian elephant, of whom Plutarch tells how he made his master understand that in his absence he had been cheated of half his rations, was not cleverer than some of his kind on service in India, who would not begin to eat till all three cakes which formed their rations were set before each of them—a fact that was told me by the officer whose duty it was to preside at their dinner. Plutarch speaks of counting oxen that knew when the number of turns was finished which constituted their daily task at a saw-mill: they refused to perform one more turn than the appointed figure. As an instance of the discrimination of animals, he tells how Alexander’s horse, Bucephalus, when unsaddled, would allow the grooms to mount him, but when he had on all his rich caparisons, no one on earth could get on his back except his royal master. There is no doubt that animals take notice of dress. I have been told that when crinolines were worn, all the dogs barked at any woman not provided with one. Plutarch was among the earliest to observe that animals discover sooner than man when ice will not bear, which he thinks that they find out by noticing if there is any sound of running water. He says truly that to draw such an inference presupposes not only sharp ears, but a real power of weighing cause and effect. Plutarch mentions foxes as particularly clever in this respect, but dogs possess the same gift. The French Ambassador at Rome—who, like all persons of superior intelligence, is very fond of animals—told me the following story. One winter day, when he was French Minister at Munich, he went alone with his gun and his dog to the banks of the Isar. Having shot a snipe, he ordered the dog to go on to the ice to fetch it, but, to his surprise, the animal, which had never disobeyed him, refused. Annoyed at its obstinacy, he went himself on to the ice, which immediately gave way, and had he not been a good swimmer he might not be now at the Palazzo Farnese.

The two creatures that have been most praised for their wisdom are the elephant and the ant, but of the ant’s admirers from Solomon to Lord Avebury, not one was ever so enthusiastic as Plutarch. Horace, indeed, had discoursed of her foresight: “She carries in her mouth whatever she is able, and piles up her heap, by no means ignorant or careless of the future; then, when Aquarius saddens the inverted year, never does she creep abroad, wisely making use of the stores which were provided beforehand.” But such a tribute sounds cold beside Plutarch’s praise of her as the tiny mirror in which the greatest marvels of Nature are reflected, a drop of the purest water, containing every Virtue, and, above all, what Homer calls “the sweetness of loving qualities.” Ants, he declares, show the utmost solicitude for their comrades, alive and dead. They exhibit their ingenuity by biting off the ends of grains to prevent them from sprouting and so spoiling the provender. He speaks, though not from his own observation, of the beautiful interior arrangements of ant-hills which had been examined by naturalists who divided the mount into sections, “A thing I cannot approve of!” Tender-hearted philosopher, who had a scruple about upsetting an ant-hill! Of other insects, he most admires the skill of spiders and bees. It is said that the bees of Crete, when rounding a certain promontory, carried tiny stones as ballast to avoid being blown away by the wind. I have seen more than once a tiny stone hanging from the spider-threads which crossed and re-crossed an avenue—it seemed to me that these were designed to steady the suspension bridge.

Plutarch insists that animals teach themselves even things outside the order of their natural habits, a fact which will be confirmed by all who have observed them closely. Just as no two animals have the same disposition, so does each one, though in greatly varying degree, display some little arts or accomplishments peculiar to itself. Plutarch mentions a trained elephant that was seen practising its steps when it thought that no one was looking. But he allots the palm of self-culture to an incomparable magpie that belonged to a barber whose shop faced the temple called the Agora of the Greeks. The bird could imitate to perfection any sort of sound, cry or tune; it was renowned in the whole quarter. Now it happened one morning that the funeral of a wealthy citizen went past, accompanied by a very fine band of trumpeters which performed an elaborate piece of music. After that day, to every one’s surprise, the magpie grew mute! Had it become deaf or dumb or both! Endless were the surmises, and what was not the general amazement when, at last, it broke its long silence by bursting forth with a flood of brilliant notes the exact reproduction of the difficult trills and cadences executed by the funeral band! Evidently it had been practising it in its head all that while, and only produced it when it had got it quite perfect. Several Romans and several Greeks witnessed the facts and could vouch for the truth of the narrative.

The swallow’s nest and the nightingale’s song make Plutarch pause and wonder; he believes, with Aristotle, that the old nightingales teach the young ones, remarking that nightingales reared in captivity never sing so well as those that have profited by the parental lessons. He gives a word to the dove of Deucalion which returned a first time to the ark because the deluge continued, but disappeared when it was set free again, the waters having subsided. Plutarch confesses, however, that this is “mythical,” and though he admits that birds deserved the name by which Euripides calls them of “Messengers of the gods,” he is inclined to attribute their warnings to the direct intervention of an over-ruling deity of whom they are the inconscient agents.

It is a pleasure to find that Plutarch had a high appreciation of the hedgehog—the charming “urchin” which represents to many an English child an epitome of wild nature, friendly yet untamed, familiar yet mysterious. He does not say that it milks cows—a calumny which is an article of faith with the British ploughman—but he relates that when the grapes are ripe, the mother urchin goes under the vines and shakes the plants till some of the grapes fall off; then, rolling herself over them, she attaches a number of grapes to her spines and so marches back to the hole where she keeps her nurslings. “One day,” says Plutarch, “when we were all together, we had the chance of seeing this with our own eyes—it looked as if a bunch of grapes was shuffling along the ground, so thickly covered was the animal with its booty.”

Dogs that threw themselves on their masters’ pyre, dogs that caused the arrest of assassins or thieves, dogs that remained with and protected the bodies of their dead masters, clever dogs, devoted dogs, magnanimous dogs—these will be all found in Plutarch’s gallery. How high-minded, he says, it is in the dog when, as Homer advises, you lay down your stick, even an angry dog ceases to attack you. He praises the affectionate regard which many have shown in giving decent burial to the dogs they cherished, and recalls how Xantippus of old, whose dog swam by his galley to Salamis when the Athenians were forced to abandon their city, buried the faithful creature on a promontory which “to this day” is known as the Dog’s Grave. Very desolate was the case of the other animals that ran up and down distraught when their masters embarked, like the poor cats and dogs which helped the English soldiers in the block-houses to while away the weary hours, and which, by superior orders, were left to their fate, though their comrades in khaki were anxious enough to carry them away. As a proof of the affection of the Greeks for their dogs Plutarch might have spoken of the not uncommon representation of them on the _Stelæ_ in the family group which brings together all the dearest ties between life and death.