The General Superiority of the Beasts. Some
admirers of the animals cared nothing for reason and
were especially interested only in man's inferiority to
the beasts in some detail or other. The question of
whether or not man was favored by Nature had
apparently been discussed as early as the fifth century
B.C. by Xenophon; he depicts a conversation between
Socrates and Aristodemus who discuss the question
(Memorabilia I, iv, 2 and IV, iii, 9-12). Anaxagoras,
another fifth-century philosopher, is also reported to
have recognized degrees of intelligence in the beasts,
though he admitted that mankind stood at the head
of the animate hierarchy. Our real difference from the
animals, he thought, is not our intelligence—for they
too possess that faculty—but the fact that we have
leaders, laws, arts, and cities (something that was to
be said of the animals too later on).
That some people anticipated the Cynics in using
the animals as exemplars is seen in a passage of the
Clouds of Aristophanes (lines 1427-29), where Pheidip-
pides justifies beating his father by the example of
“cocks and other beasts.” The joke would have meant
little if some debaters had not used similar arguments.
By Aristotle's time the question must have been
commonly discussed, since in the De partibus animal-
ium (687a), he refers to the argument that the beasts
are better off than we because of their corporeal
endowment—horns, claws, hooves—whereas man is
born naked and defenseless. Aristotle's reply to this,
a reply which hardly meets the point, is that the human
hand is a better weapon than anything given to the
beasts for it can vary the weapons as the need arises.
Though Aristotle himself believed in the superiority
of man, he was used by others to demonstrate the
antithetical idea. For in his Historia animalium here
and there he speaks of the cleverness of the swallows
in building their nests, the medical knowledge of the
Cretan goats, the singing lessons given by the mother
nightingale to her young, and so on.
As early as Democritus (fifth century B.C.) we find
the animals praised for their sobriety, for knowing the
extent of their needs and never seeking to go beyond
them. Diogenes again is cited as witness to the animals'
health and longevity as well as to their lack of super-
fluities. The New Comedy also played on this theme
of man's misery as compared with the animals: men
use their reason for endless arguments; the beasts are
free from contention. We are slaves to opinion; they
simply follow the commands of Nature. In a fragment
of Philemon (ca. 361-263 B.C.) we find the beasts
praised for their “single nature”: all lions are brave,
all hares timid, all foxes live in the same way. But every
man lives according to his own individual nature. In
Menander (342-291 B.C.) man is the one “unnatural
animal.” Whatever evils happen to an animal come
from Nature. But besides those which are natural, men
invent evils. “We are pained if someone sneezes; if
someone speaks ill, we are angry; if someone has a
dream, we are frightened; if an owl hoots, we are
terrified. Struggles, opinions, contests, laws, all these
evils are added to those in nature.” And like Gryllus,
one of Menander's characters declares that if he were
to be born again, he would choose any animal rather
than the human. The beasts have no flatterers, no
sycophants, no criminals.
One of the major sources of later theriophily is Pliny
(ca. A.D. 23-79), for Pliny was read by everyone and
his Natural History was a sort of encyclopedia. In the
proemium to this work (VII, 1) he wrote the famous
words, “it is hard to tell whether Nature has been a
kindly parent to man or a cruel stepmother.” To the
other animals she has given a natural covering—shells,
hulls, spines, shaggy hair, fur, feathers, scales, fleeces—
but man “she casts forth on his natal day, naked upon
a naked soil, casts him forth to weep and beg; and
no other animal weeps from the moment of its birth.”
What folly, he continues, to think that such a creature
is born to a high estate! Other animals know from birth
whether they are to walk, swim, or fly. But man lies
helpless and can neither talk, walk, nor eat without
instruction. Man alone knows grief, the desire for excess
or luxury, ambition, avarice, superstition. He alone
worries about his sepulture and an afterlife. Man alone
makes war on his kind. In short, man is the most
unhappy of all animals and most of man's evils come
from man.
