LITMIR.BIZ

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to the man

      “Who considers what he is, whence he came, and whither he ought to tend; and who, in what pertains to the nourishment of the body and other necessary concerns, is of really thoughtful and earnest mind—who resolves that he shall not be led astray and governed by his passions. And let such a man tell me whether a rich flesh diet is more easily procured, or incites less to the indulgence of irregular passions and appetites, than a light vegetable dietary. But if neither he, nor a physician, nor, indeed, any reasonable man whosoever, dares to affirm this, why do we persist in oppressing ourselves with gross feeding? And why do we not, together with that luxurious indulgence, throw off the encumbrances and snares which attend it?

      “It is not from those who have lived on innocent foods that murderers, tyrants, robbers, and sycophants have come, but from eaters of flesh. The necessaries of life are few and easily procured, without violation of justice, liberty, or peace of mind; whereas luxury obliges those ordinary souls who take delight in it to covet riches, to give up their liberty, to sell justice, to misspend their time, to ruin their health, and to renounce the satisfaction of an upright conscience.”

      In condemning animal sacrifice, he declares that “it is by means of an exalted and purified intellect alone that we can approximate to the Supreme Being, to whom nothing material should be offered.” He distinguishes four degrees of virtue, the lowest being that of the man who attempts to moderate his passions; the highest, the life of pure reason, by which man becomes one with the Supreme Existence.

      In the third book, maintaining that other animals are endowed with high degrees of reasoning and of mental faculties, and, in some measure, even with moral perception, Porphyry proceeds logically to insist that they are, therefore, the proper objects of Justice:—

      “By these arguments, and others which I shall afterwards adduce in recording the opinions of the old peoples, it is demonstrated that [many species of] the lower animals are rational. In very many, reason is imperfect indeed—of which, nevertheless, they are by no means destitute. Since then justice is due to rational beings, as our opponents allow, how is it possible to evade the admission also that we are bound to act justly towards the races of beings below us? We do not extend the obligations of justice to plants, because there appears in them no indication of reason; although, even in the case of these, while we eat the fruits we do not, with the fruits, cut away the trunks. We use corn and leguminous vegetables when they have fallen on the earth and are dead. But no one uses for food the flesh of dead animals, unless they have been killed by violence, so that there is in these things a radical injustice. As Plutarch says, it does not follow, because we are in need of many things, that we should therefore act unjustly towards all beings. Inanimate things we are allowed to injure to a certain extent, to procure the necessary means of existence—if to take anything from plants while they are growing can be said to be an injury—but to destroy living and conscious beings merely for luxury and pleasure is truly barbarous and unjust. And to refrain from killing them neither diminishes our sustenance nor hinders our living happily. If indeed the destruction of other animals and the eating of flesh were as requisite as air and water, plants and fruits, then there could be no injustice, as they would be necessary to our nature.”

      Porphyry, it is scarcely necessary to remark, by these arguments proves himself to have been, in moral as well as mental perception, as far ahead of the average thinkers of the present day as he was of his own times. He justly maintains that

      “Sensation and perception are the principle of the kinship of all living beings. And [he reminds his opponents] Zeno and his followers [the Stoics] admit that alliance or kinship (οἰκειώσις)[83] is the foundation of justice. Now, to the lower animals pertain perception and the sensations of pain and fear and injury. Is it not absurd, then, whereas we see that many of our own species live by brute sense alone, and exhibit neither reason nor intellect, and that very many of them surpass the most terrible wild beasts in cruelty, rage, rapine; that they murder even their own relatives; that they are tyrants and the tools of tyrants—seeing all this, is it not absurd, I say, to hold that we are obliged by nature to act leniently towards them, while no kindness is due from us to the Ox that ploughs, the Dog that is brought up with us, and those who nourish us with their milk and cover our bodies with their wool? Is not such a prejudice most irrational and absurd?”

      To the objection of Chrysippus (the second founder of the school of the Porch) that the gods made us for themselves and for the sake of each other, and that they made the non-human species for us—a convenient subterfuge by no means unknown to writers and talkers of our own times—Porphyry unanswerably replies:—

      “Let him to whom this sophism may appear to have weight or probability, consider how he would meet the dictum of Karneades[84] that ‘everything in nature is benefited, when it obtains the ends to which it is adapted and for which it was generated.’ Now, benefit is to be understood in a more general way as meaning what the Stoics call useful. ‘The hog, however,’ says Chrysippus, ‘was produced by nature for the purpose of being slaughtered and used for food, and when it undergoes this, it obtains the end for which it is adapted, and it is therefore benefited!’ But if God brought other animals into existence for the use of men, what use do we make of flies, beetles, lice, vipers, and scorpions? Some of these are hateful to the sight, defile the touch, are intolerable to the smell, while others are actually destructive to human beings who fall in their way.[85] With respect to the cetacea, in particular, which Homer tells us live by myriads in the seas, does not the Demiurgus[86] teach us that they have come into being for the good of things in general? And unless they affirm that all things were indeed made for us and on our sole account, how can they escape the imputation of wrong-doing in treating injuriously beings that came into existence according to the general arrangement of Nature?

      

      “I omit to insist on the fact that, if we depend on the argument of necessity or utility, we cannot avoid admitting by implication that we ourselves were created only for the sake of certain destructive animals, such as crocodiles and snakes and other monsters, for we are not in the least benefited by them. On the contrary, they seize and destroy and devour men whom they meet—in so doing acting not at all more cruelly than we. Nay, they act thus savagely through want and hunger; we from insolent wantonness and luxurious pleasure[87], amusing ourselves as we do also in the Circus and in the murderous sports of the chase. By thus acting, a barbarous and brutal nature becomes strengthened in us, which renders men insensible to the feeling of pity and compassion. Those who first perpetrated these iniquities fatally blunted the most important part of the civilised mind. Therefore it is that Pythagoreans consider kindness and gentleness to the lower animals to be an exercise of philanthropy and gentleness.”

      Porphyry unanswerably and eloquently concludes this division of his subject with the à fortiori argument:—

      “By admitting that [selfish] pleasure is the legitimate end of our action, justice is evidently destroyed. For to whom must it not be clear that the feeling of justice is fostered by abstinence? He who abstains from injuring other species will be so much the more careful not to injure his own kind. For he who loves all animated Nature will not hate any one tribe of innocent beings, and by how much greater his love for the whole, by so much the more will he cultivate justice towards a part of them, and to that part to which he is most allied.”

      In fine, according to Porphyry, he who extends his sympathies to all innocent life is nearest to the Divine nature. Well would it have been for all the after-ages had this, the only sure foundation of any code of ethics worthy of the name, found favour with the constituted instructors and rulers of the western world. The fourth and final Book reviews the dietetic habits of some of the leading peoples of antiquity, and of certain of the philosophic societies which practised abstinence more or less rigidly. As for the Essenes, Porphyry describes their code of morals and manner of living in terms of high praise. We can here give only an abstract of his eloquent eulogium:—

      “They are despisers of mere riches, and the communistic principle with them is admirably carried out. Nor is it possible to find amongst them a single person distinguished by the possession of wealth, for all who enter the society are obliged by their laws to divide property for the common good. There

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