This it is that distinguishes us from the brute herd. And therefore we alone, endued with that venerable distinction of reason[1129] and a capacity for divine things, with an aptitude for the practice as well as the reception of all arts and sciences, have received, transmitted to us from heaven's high citadel,[1130] a moral sense, which brutes prone[1131] and stooping toward earth, are lacking in. In the beginning of the world, the common Creator of all vouchsafed to them only the principle of vitality; to us he gave souls[1132] also, that an instinct of affection reciprocally shared, might urge us to seek for, and to give, assistance; to unite in one people, those before widely-scattered;[1133] to emerge from the ancient wood, and abandon the forests[1134] where our fathers dwelt; to build houses, to join another's dwelling to our own homes, that the confidence mutually engendered by a neighbor's threshold might add security[1135] to our slumbers; to cover with our arms a fellow-citizen[1136] when fallen or staggering from a ghastly wound; to sound the battle-signal from a common clarion; to be defended by the same ramparts, and closed in by the key of a common portal.

But now the unanimity[1137] of serpents is greater than ours. The wild beast of similar genus spares his kindred[1138] spots. When did ever lion, though stronger, deprive his fellow-lion of life? In what wood did ever boar perish by the tusks of a boar[1139] larger than himself? The tigress of India[1140] maintains unbroken harmony with each tigress that ravens. Bears, savage to others, are yet at peace among themselves. But for man![1141] he is not content with forging on the ruthless anvil the death-dealing steel! While his progenitors, those primæval smiths, that wont to hammer out naught save rakes and hoes, and wearied out with mattocks and plowshares, knew not the art of manufacturing swords.[1142] Here we behold a people whose brutal passion is not glutted with simple murder, but deem[1143] their fellows' breasts and arms and faces a kind of natural food.

What then would Pythagoras[1144] exclaim; whither would he not flee, could he be witness in our days to such atrocities as these! He that abstained from all that was endued with life as from man himself; and did not even indulge his appetite with every kind of pulse.

FOOTNOTES:

[1055] Volusius is unknown. Some suppose him to be the same person as the Bithynicus to whom Plutarch wrote a treatise on Friendship.

[1056] Ægyptus. So Cicero, "Ægyptiorum morem quis ignorat? Quorum imbutæ mentes pravitatis erroribus, quamvis carnificinam prius subierint quam ibin aut aspidem aut felem aut canem aut crocodilum violent; quorum etiam imprudentes si quidquam fecerint, pœnam nullam recusent." Tusc. Qu., v., 27. Cf. Athen., vol. ii., p. 650, Dind.

[1057] Crocodilon. Vid. Herod., ii., 69.—Ibin. Cic., de Nat. Deor., i., 36.

[1058] Memnone. His statue stood in the temple of Serapis at Thebes. Plin., xxvi., 7. Strabo, xvii., c. 1, τὰ ἄνω μέρη τὰ ἀπο τῆς καθέδρας πέπτωκε σεισμοῦ γεννηθέντος. He says the ψόφος comes from "the lower part remaining on the base." Cf. 1. 56, "Vultus dimidios." Sat. viii., 4, "Et Curios jam dimidios." iii., 219, "Mediamque Minervam." Cf. Clinton, Fasti Romani, in A.D. 130.

[1059] Canem. Cf. Lucan, viii., 832, "Semideosque canes." The allusion is to the worship of Anubis, cf. vi., 533.

[1060] Porrum.