The Jews upon this subject agree with the common and natural opinion; and the Talmud accordingly, when any mischief has been done by an animal, distinguishes between an innocent beast and a vicious one, the owner of an innocent one being required to pay only half the amount of an injury thus, as it was deemed, casually incurred. There have been cases in which the laws have considered a beast as guilty of a crime, and amenable therefore to penal justice. In the year 1403 Simon de Baudemont, Lieutenant at Meulont of Jhean Lord of Maintenon the Bailiff of Mantes and Meulont, signed an attestation making known the expences, which had been incurred in order to execute justice on a Sow that had eaten a child. “For expences with the jail the charge was six sols. Item, to the executioner who came from Paris to Meulont to put the sentence in execution by the command of our Lord the Bailiff and of the king's Attorney, 54 sols. Item, for the carriage that conveyed her to execution, 6 sols. Item, for ropes to tie and haul her up, 2 sols, 8 deniers. Item, for gloves 12 deniers; amounting in the whole to 69 sols, 8 deniers.” It must be supposed the Executioner insisted upon the gloves, as a point of honour, that no one might reproach him with having sullied his hands by performing upon such a subject.
When Apollonius was introduced to the King of Babylon, the King invited him to sacrifice with him, for he was about to offer a Nisean horse to the Sun, selected for its beauty and adorned with all pomp for the occasion. But the Philosopher replied, “O King do you sacrifice after your manner, and give me leave to sacrifice after mine.” He then took frankincense, and prayed, saying, “O Sun, conduct me so far as it seemeth good to me and to thee. And let me become acquainted with virtuous men; but as for the wicked, let me neither know them nor they me.” And throwing the frankincense in the fire he observed the smoke, how it ascended and which way it bent, and just touching the fire when it seemed that he had sacrificed enough, he said to the King that he had performed the rites of his country, and forthwith withdrew that he might have nothing to do with blood and slaughter. Afterwards when the King took him where were many lions, bears and panthers reserved for sport, invited him to go with him and hunt them, Apollonius replied, “King, you should remember, that I did not chuse to be present at your sacrifice, much less should I like to see animals wounded, and by the pain of their wounds rendered more ferocious than nature has made them.”
Isaac la Peyresc thought differently from the Talmudists and the French Lawyers. He says, quoting the Apostle, Ubi non est lex, neque prævaricatio est. Where ‘no law is, there is no transgression.’ Prævaricatio autem eadem est, quæ transgressio legis: illa ipsa proprie quæ peccatum imputationis labe infecit. Quod ut compingatur in oculos: pecudes actualiter et materialiter eadem faciunt, quæ transgrediuntur homines; incestant, rapiunt, occidunt; non erit tamen uspiam adeo supinus qui dicat, pecudes peccare ad similitudinem transgressionis hominum; quia pecudes quæ hæc peccant, sequuntur tantum suam naturam et suam materiam; neque legum transgrediuntur ullam, quia nulla eis data est cujus transgressione formetur in eis et imputetur peccatum.
Yet it cannot be doubted that in such a case Peyresc himself, disregarding his own arguments would have ordered the Sow to be put to death.
This author derives peccatum from pecus, for, says he, “as often as a man wilfully departs from that right reason which constitutes him man,—as often as under the impulse of that brute matter which he has in common with beasts, he commits any action fitting in a beast, but unworthy in man, so often he seems to fall below his own species, and sink into that of a brute.” “Latini nomen peccati mutuati sunt à pecore. Quoties enim homo delirat à rectâ ratione illa quæ hominem constituit; quoties impulsu materiæ suæ quam habet communem cum brutis, quid agit dignum pecore, et indignum homine, toties cadere videtur à specie suâ, et incidere in speciem pecoris sive bruti.”
Pecunia is known to be derived from Pecus, wealth, of which money is the representative, having originally consisted in cattle. As money is proverbially the root of all evil, this etymological connection might be remarkable enough to be deemed mysterious by those who are fond of discovering mysteries in words.
“Brutes,” Hutchinson says, “are made in scripture objects to inculcate the duties in society, and even emblems of spiritual and divine perfections. Many of them are more strictly bound in pairs than is common between men and women; many both males and females take greater care and pains, and run greater risques for the education and defence of their young, than any of our species. Many of them excel us in instructing their young, so in policy, in industry, in mechanical arts and operations. And there are other species among them, examples to deter men from the vices in society.” “The power in brutes,” he says, “is by the same agent as that in the body of man, and they are made of the same species of dust; most of them are guided by what is called instinct; some of them are tamed and disciplined and their powers made serviceable to men, and all of them are subject to the immediate power of God, when he pleases to direct them. Mechanism is carried so far in them, that in the parts or degrees of sensation they excel man; that by every one of their actions man might see the ne plus ultra of sense, and know how to distinguish the difference between them and the decayed image in him, to value it accordingly, and excite a proportionate zeal in him to recover the first perfections in that image, and augment them to secure the pleasure of exercising them upon the most desirable objects to all eternity.” So far so good, but this once influential writer makes an erroneous conclusion when he says, “if you allow anything farther than mechanism to Brutes, imagine that they have souls, or think, or act the part of souls: you either begin to think that you have no soul, or that it is, such as are in Brutes, mortal.”
The question de Origine et Naturâ Animarum in Brutis was brought before the Theologians of seven Protestant Academies in the year 1635, by Daniel Sennertus Professor of Medicine at Wittemberg, of whose Institutes Sir Thomas Browne says to a student in that art, “assure yourself that when you are a perfect master of them you will seldom meet with any point in physic to which you will not be able to speak like a man.” It was the opinion of this very learned professor that what in scholastic language is called the form of every perfect thing, (distinguished from figure,—forma est naturæ bonum, figura, artis opus) though it is not a soul, yet even in precious stones is something altogether different from the four elements, and that every soul, or living principle, is a certain quintessence; the wonderful operations in plants, and the more wonderful actions of brute creatures, far exceeding all power of the elements, had convinced him of this. But for asserting it, Freitagius the medical Professor at Groninghen attacked him fiercely as a blasphemer and a heretic. Sennertus being then an old man was more moved by this outrage than became one of his attainments and high character. So he laid the case before the Universities of Leipsic, Rostock, Basle, Marpurg, Konigsberg, Jena, Strasburg, and Altorff, and he requested their opinion upon these two propositions, whether what he had affirmed, that the souls of brute creatures had been created at first from nothing by the Deity, and were not of an elementary nature, but of something different, was blasphemous and heretical, or whether it were not an ignorant opinion of his assailant, that brute animals consisted wholly of elementary matter, both as to their body and soul?
They all answered the questions more or less at large, the Leipsic Doctors saying officii nostri duximus esse ut in timore Domini ea sub diligentem disquisitionem vocaremus. They saw nothing irreligious in the opinion that God at the creation had formed the bodies of brutes from elementary matter, and created their souls ex nihilo; after which both were reproduced in the natural course of generation; these souls however were not immortal, nor so separable from the matter with which they were united, as to survive it, and exist without it, or return again into their bodies; but when the animals died, the animal soul died also. Thus the excellence of man was unimpaired, and the privilege of the human soul remained inviolate, the prerogative of man being that God had breathed into him the breath of life, whereby he became a living soul. Thus they fully acquitted Sennertus of the charge brought against him; and waiving any such direct condemnation of his accuser as he had desired, condemned in strong terms the insolent manner in which the accusation had been preferred.
The Theologians of Rostock replied more briefly. Dismissing at once the charge of blasphemy and heresy as absurd, they treated the question as purely philosophical, saying, “Quod de elementari naturâ animarum brutorum dicitur, de illo nostrum non est disserere. Arbitramur, hæc non solum Philosophorum, sed et libertati, super his modestè, veritatis inveniendæ studio, philosophantium permittenda; quos nimium constringere, et unius hominis, Aristotelis, alteriusve, velle alligare opinioni, pugnare videtur cum naturâ intellectus humani, quem nulli opinioni servum Deus esse voluit.” Concerning the second question, they were not willing, they said, to draw the saw of contention with any one; “Si tamen, quod sentimus dicendum est, respondemus, illum qui cœlum et terram ex nihilo creavit, non eguisse ullâ materiâ, ex quâ brutorum animas produceret; sed illi placuisse iis quæ Moses recitat verbis compellare terram et aquam, et ad solius Omnipotentis nutum et imperium, ex subjectis quæ compellârit, animas emersisse.” This answer Sennertus obtained through his friend Lauremberg the Horticulturist and Botanist, who advised him at the same time to disregard all invidious attacks; “Turbas tibi dari quòd liberè philosophari satagis, id ipse nôsti, neque novum esse, neque insolens, hâc ætate. Eandem tecum sortem experiuntur omnes eleganter et solidè eruditi, quibus qui paria facere non valet, invidet et oblatrat. Tu verò noli hoc nomine te quicquam macerare neu obtrectationem illam gravius vocare ad animum. Nota est orbi tua eruditio, tua virtus et ingenuitas, quæ ea propter nullam patietur jacturam. Tu modo, ut hactenus fecisti, pergito bene mereri de Republicâ literariâ, et mihi favere, certò tibi persuasus, habere te hîc loci hominem tui amantem, et observantem maxime.”