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The Ethics of Diet. Howard Williams
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isbn 4057664648310
Автор произведения Howard Williams
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“Pythagoras seems to me to have derived his mildness towards irrational animals from the Law. For instance, he interdicted the employment of the young of sheep and goats and cows for some time after their birth; not even on the pretext of sacrifice allowing it, on account both of the young ones and of the mother; training men to gentleness by their conduct towards those beneath them. ‘Resign,’ he says, ‘the young one to the mother for the proper time.’ For if nothing takes place without a cause, and milk is produced in large quantity in parturition for the sustenance of the progeny, he who tears away the young one from the supply of the milk and the breast of the mother, dishonours Nature.”
Reverting to the Jewish religion, he asserts:—
“The Law, too, expressly prohibits the slaying of such animals as are pregnant till they have brought forth, remotely restraining the proneness of men to do wrong to men; and thus also it has extended its clemency to the irrational animals, that by the exercise of humanity to beings of different races we may practise amongst those of the same species a larger abundance of it. Those too that kick the bellies of certain animals before parturition, in order to feast on flesh mixed with milk, make the womb created for the birth of the fœtus its grave, though the Law expressly commands ‘but neither shalt thou seethe a lamb in his mother’s milk.’[74] For the nourishment of the living animal, it is meant, may not be converted into sauce for that which has been deprived of life; and that which is the cause of life may not co-operate in the consumption of its flesh.”[75]
IX.
PORPHYRY. 233–306 (?) A.D.
ONE of the most erudite, as well as one of the most spiritual, of the literati of any age or people, and certainly the most estimable of all the extant Greek philosophers after the days of Plutarch, was born either at Tyre or at some neighbouring town. His original name, Malchus, the Greek form of the Syrian Melech (king), and the name by which he is known to us, Porphyrius (purple-robed), we may well take deservedly to mark his philosophic superiority. He was exceptionally fortunate in his preceptors—Longinus, the most eloquent and elegant of the later Greek critics, under whom he studied at Athens; Origen, the most independent and learned of the Christian Fathers, from whom, probably, he derived his vast knowledge of theological literature; and, finally, Plotinus, the famous founder of New-Platonism, who had established his school at Rome in the year 244.
Upon first joining the school of Plotinus, he had ventured to contest some of the characteristic doctrines of his new teacher, and he even wrote a book to refute them. Amerius, his fellow-disciple, was chosen to reply to this attack. After a second trial of strength by each antagonist, Amerius, by weight of argument induced Porphyry to confess his errors, and to read his recantation before the assembled Platonists. Porphyry ever after remained an attached and enthusiastic follower of the beloved master, with the final revision and edition of whose voluminous works he was entrusted. He had lived with him six years when, becoming so far unsettled in his mind as even to contemplate suicide in order to free himself from the shackles of the flesh, by the persuasion of his preceptor he made a voyage to Sicily for the restoration of his health and serenity of mind. This was in 270, in the thirty-seventh year of his age. Returning to the capital upon the death of his master, he continued the amiable but vain work of attempting the reform of the established religion, which had then sunk to its lowest degradation, and to this labour of love he may be said to have devoted his whole life. At an advanced age he married Marcella, the widow of one of his friends, who was a Christian and the mother of a rather numerous progeny, with the view, as he tells us, of superintending the education of her children.
About sixty separate works of Porphyry are enumerated by Fabricius, published, unpublished, or lost; the last numbering some forty-three distinct productions. The most important of his writings are—
(1) On Abstinence from the Flesh of Living Beings,[76] in four books, addressed to a certain Firmus Castricius, a Pythagorean, who for some reason or other had become a renegade to the principles, or at least to the practice, of his old faith. Next to the inculcation of abstinence as a spiritual or moral obligation, Porphyry’s “chief object seems to have been to recommend a more spiritual worship in the place of the sacrificial system of the pagan world, with all its false notions and practical abuses. This work,” adds Dr. Donaldson, “is valuable on many accounts, and full of information.”
(2) His criticism on Christianity, which he entitled a Treatise against the Christians—his most celebrated production. It was divided into fifteen books. All our knowledge of it is derived from Eusebius, Jerome, and other ecclesiastical writers. Several years after its appearance the courtly Bishop of Cæsarea, the well-known historian of the first ages of Christianity, replied to it in a work extending to twenty-five books. More than a century later, Theodosius II. caused the obnoxious volume to be publicly burned, and Porphyry’s criticism shared the fate of those “many elaborate treatises which have since been committed to the flames” by the theological or political zeal of orthodox emperors and princes.[77]
(3) The Life of Pythagoras—a fragment, but, as far as it goes, the most interesting of the Pythagorean biographies.
(4) On the Life of Plotinus and the Arrangement of his Works. It is to this biography we are indebted for our knowledge of the estimable elaborator of New-Platonism. We learn that he was the pupil of Ammonius, who disputes with Numenius the fame of having originated the principles of the new school of thought of which Plotinus, however, was the St. Paul—the actual founder. Of a naturally feeble constitution, he had early betaken himself to the consolations of divine philosophy. After vainly seeking rest for his truth-loving and aspiring spirit in other systems, he at last found in Ammonius the teacher and teaching which his intellectual and spiritual sympathies demanded. His great ambition was to visit the country of Buddha and of Zerdusht or Zoroaster, and, for that purpose, he joined the expedition of the Emperor Gordian against the Persians. The defeat and death of that prince frustrated his plans. He then settled at Rome, where he established his school, and he remained in Italy until his death in 270. By the earnest solicitations of his disciples, Porphyry and Amerius, he was induced with much reluctance to publish his oral discourses, and eventually they appeared in fifty-four books, edited by Porphyry, who gave them the name of the Enneads, as being arranged in six groups of nine treatises. Perhaps no teacher ever engaged to so unbounded an extent the admiration and affection of his followers.
“During the long period of his residence at Rome, Plotinus enjoyed an estimation almost approaching to a belief in his superhuman wisdom and sanctity. His ascetic virtue, and the mysterious transcendentalism of his conversation, which made him the Coleridge of the day, seems to have carried away the minds of his associates, and raised them to a state of imaginative exaltation. He was regarded as a sort of prophet, divine himself, and capable of elevating his disciples to a participation in his divinity. … These coincidences or collusions [his alleged miracles] show how sacred a character had attached to Plotinus. And we see the same evidenced in his social influence. Men and women of the highest rank crowded round him, and his house was filled with young persons of both sexes whom their parents when dying had committed to his care. Rogatian, a senator and prætor-elect, gave up his wealth and dignities, and lived as the humble bedesman of his friends, devoting himself to ascetic and contemplative philosophy. His self-denial obtained for him the approbation of Plotinus, who held him up as a pattern of philosophy; and he gained the more solid advantage of a perfect cure from the worst kind of rheumatic gout. The influence of Plotinus extended to the imperial throne itself. The weak-minded Gallienus, and his Empress Salonina, were so completely guided by the philosopher, that he had actually obtained