NECESSITY OF INTERNECINE WARFARE.
What then (will it be objected) is the necessity of this natural internecine warfare of animals, and also of men? First, animals have to devour each other in order to renew themselves; they could not, indeed, last eternally, even if they were not killed. Is there any reason to complain because, being already condemned to death, as they are, they should find an end which is useful to other beings? What objection can there be to their mutually devouring each other, in order to be reborn under other forms? It is as if on the stage an actor who is thought to be killed, goes to change his clothing, and returns under another mask. Is it objected that he was not really dead? Yes indeed, but dying is no more than a change of bodies, just as the comedian changes his costume, or if the body were to be entirely despoiled, this is no more than when an actor, at the end of a drama, lays aside his costume, only to take it up again when once more the drama begins. Therefore, there is nothing frightful in the mutual transformation of animals into each other. Is it not better for them to have lived under this condition, than never to have lived at all? Life would then be completely absent from the universe, and life could no longer be communicated to other beings. But as this universe contains a multiple life, it produces and varies everything during the course of its existence; as it were joking with them, it never ceases to beget living beings, remarkable by beauty and by the proportion of their forms. The combats in which mortal men continually fight against each other, with a regularity strongly reminding of the Pyrrhic dances (as thought Plato[65]), clearly show how all these affairs, that are considered so serious, are only children's games, and that their death was nothing serious. To die early in wars and battles is to precede by only a very little time the unescapable fate of old age, and it is only an earlier departure for a closer return. We may be comforted for the loss of our possessions during our lifetime by observing that they have belonged to others before us, and that, for those who have deprived us thereof, they form but a very fragile possession, since they, in turn, will be bereft thereof by others; and that, if they be not despoiled of their riches, they will lose still more by keeping them.[66] Murders, massacres, the taking and pillaging of towns should be considered as in the theatre we consider changes of scene and of personages, the tears and cries of the actors.[67]