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Plutarch

Morals: Of Eating of Flesh

[2nd c.] Plutarch, "Of Eating of Flesh," in Plutarch's Morals, translated from the Greek by Several Hands, 5 Volumes (Boston, 1874; Google Books: Online Library of Free eBooks.)

You ask of me then for what reason it was that Pythagoras abstained from eating flesh. I for my part do much admire in what humor, with what soul or reason , the first man with his mouth touched slaugher, and reached to his lips the flesh of a dead animal, and hvaing set before people courses of ghastly corpses and ghosts, could give those parts the names of meat and victuals, that but a little before lowed, cried, moved, and saw; how his sight could endure the blood of slaughtered, flayed, and magled bodies; how his smell could bear their scent; adn how the very nastiness happened not to offend the taste, while it chewed the sores of others, and participated of the saps and juices of deadly wounds. (3)

But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh, we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy. And then we fancy that the voices it utters and screams forth to us are nothing else but uncertain inarticulate sounds and noises, and not the several deprecations, entreaties, and pleadings of each of them. (6)

And what meal is not expensive? That for which no animal is put to death. Shall we reckon a soul to be a small expense. I will not say perhaps of a mother, or oa father, or of some friends, as Empedocles di; but one participating of feeling, of seeing, of hearing, of imaginaition, and of intellection; which eah animal hath received from nature. (13)

[In this later edition of Plutarch's Morals, the contents of volume the fifth provides the following introductory paragraph for William Baxter's translation of Of Eating of Flesh.]

The very idea of eating the carcasses of slain animals is repulsive, 8. Who could have begun the practice, but from the direst necessity ? 4. Men must have been driven to the deed of slaying animals for food, because the supply of food from the vegetable world had utterly failed, 4, 5. We have no such necessity, 5. Man is not by nature a carnivorous animal, 7. Our conduct in slaying animals and then preparing them for food is wholly against nature, 8. Animal food is injurious : it clogs and confuses the mind and renders it stupid, 9. It operates unfavourably on character, 9, 10. If we must eat flesh, let it be with sorrow and pity ; not tormenting and abusing the poor animal before taking its life, 11. Passing the bounds of nature in our feeding, intemperate appetites and shameful lusts are gratified, 12. Cruelty to mankind is induced, 12. Animals have senses ; they have faculties for seeing, hearing, understanding : is it right to extinguish these faculties ? 13. Who knows but the bodies of animals may contain the souls of deceased men ; of a father, brother, son or other friend ? 14, 15.

The first English translation online at Animal Rights History.

[ 2nd c.] Plutarch, Whether it be Lawful to Eat Flesh or No in The Philosopie, Commonlie Called, the Morals , trans. by Philemon Holland (London, 1603; Online at Animal Rights History, 2003).

But you demand of mee, for what cause Pythagoras absteined from eating flesh ? And I againe do marvell, what affection, what maner of courage, or what motive and reason had that man, who first approached with his mouth unto a slaine creature, who durst with his lips once touch the flesh of a beast either killed or dead; or how he could finde in his heart to be served at his table with dead bodies, and as a man may say, very idols, to make his food and nourishment of those parts and members which a little before did blea, low, bellow, walke and see. How could his eies endure to beholde such murder and slaughter.

And for a little peece of flesh we take away their life, we bereave them of their sunne and of light, cutting short that race of life which nature had limited and prefixed for them; and more than so, those lamentable and trembling voices which they utter for feare, we suppose to be inarticulate or unsignificant sounds, and nothing lesse than pitifull praiers, supplications, pleas & justifications of those poore innocent creatures, who in their language, everie one of them crie.

[ 2nd c.] Plutarch, Of Eating Flesh in The Philosopie, Commonlie Called, the Morals, trans. by Philemon Holland (London, 1603; Online at Animal Rights History, 2003).

What supper then, is not to be counted sumptuous, for which there is evermore killed some living creature or other; for doe we thinke little of the dispense of a soule? and suppose we, that the losse of life is not costly? I do not now say, that it was peradventure the soule of a mother, a father, some friend, or a sonne, as Empedocles gave it out; but surely a soule endued with sense, with seeing, hearing, apprehension, understanding, witte and discretion, such as nature hath given to each living creature.

WHETHER IT BE LAW-full to eat flesh or no.

The former Oration or Treatise.

But you demand of mee, for what cause Pythagoras absteined from eating flesh? And I againe do marvell, what affection, what maner of courage, or what motive and reason had that man, who first approached with his mouth unto a slaine creature, who durst with his lips once touch the flesh of a beast either killed or dead; or how he could finde in his heart to be served at his table with dead bodies, and as a man may say, very idols, to make his food and nourishment of those parts and members which a little before did blea, low, bellow, walke and see. How could his eies endure to beholde such murder and slaughter, whiles the poore beasts were either sticked or had the throats cut, were slaied and dismembred? how could his nose abide the smell and sent that came from them? how came it that his talk was not cleane marred and overthrowen with horrour, when he came to handle those uncouth sores and ulcers; or receive the blood and humours, issuing out of the deadly wounds.

The skinnes now slaied, upon the ground did spraule,
The flesh on spits did bellow still and low:
Roast, sod and raw, did crie aswell as craule,
And yeeld a voice of living oxe or cow.

But this, you will say, is a loud lie, and meere poeticall fiction; howbeit, this was certeinly a strange and monstrous supper, that any man should hunger after those beasts, and desire to eat them whiles they still kept a lowing; to prescribe also, and teach men how they should feed of those creatures which live and crie still; to ordeine likewise, how they ought to be dressed, boiled, roasted, and served up to the boord.

But he who first invented these monstruosities, ought to be inquired after, and not hee who last gave over and rejected the same. Or a man may well say, that those who at the first began to eat flesh, had all just causes so to do, in regard of their want and necessitie: for surelv, it was not by reason of disordinate and enormious appetite which they used a long time, nor upon plentie and abundance of necessarie things, that they grew to this insolencie, to seeke after strange pleasures, & those contrarie to nature. But verily, if they could recover their senses and speech againe, they might well say now, Oh how happie and well beloved of the gods are you, who live in these daies! in what a world and age are you borne! what affluence of all sorts of good things do you enjoy! what harvests, what store of fruits yeeldeth the earth unto you! how conmmodious are the vintages! and what riches do the fields bring unto you! what a number of trees and plants do furnish you with delights and pleasures, which you may gather and receive, when you so thinke good! you may live (if you list) in all mailer of delicacie, without once fouling your hands for the matter; whereas our hap was to be borne in the hardest time and most terrible age of the world, when as we could not chuse but incur (by reason of the new creation of all things) a great want and streight indigence of many necessaries: the face of the heaven and skie was still covered with the aire; the starres were dusked with troubled and instable humors, together with fire and tempestuous windes: the sunne was not yet setled and established, having a constant and certeine race to holde his course in,

From East to West, to make both even and morne
Distinct, nor by return from Tropiques twaine;
The seasons chang'd from those that were beforne,
Bedight with leaves, with flowers, with fruits and graine.

The earth suffered wrong by the inordinate streames and inundations of rivers, which had neither certeine chanels nor banks: much of it lay waste and deformed, with loughs, marishes, and deepe bogges; much also remained savage, being over-spred with wild woods and fruitlesse forests: it brought forth no fruits ripe and pleasant; neither were there any tooles and instruments belonging to any arte; nor so much as any invention of a witty head. Hunger never gave us case or time of repose; neither was there any expectation or waiting for the yeerely seasons of seednesse, for there was no sowing at all. No marvell therefore, if we did eat the flesh of beasts and living creatures even contrary to nature, considering that then the very mosse and barke of trees served for food; & well was he who could find any greene grasse or quick coich, or so much as the root of the herbe Phleos: but whensoever men could meet with acornes and mast to taste and feed upon, they would dance and hop for joy about an oake or beech tree; and in their rusticall songs call the earth their bountifull mother, and their kinde nourse: and such a day as that onely, they accounted festivall: all their life besides was full of vexation , sorrow and heavinesse. But now, what rage, what furie and madnesse inciteth you to commit such murders and carnage? seeing you have suck store and plentie of all things necessarie for your life? why belie you the earth, and most unthankfully dishonour her, as if shee could not susteine and nourish you? why doe you violate the divine power of Certes the inventresse of sacred lawes, and shame sweet and gracious Bacchus, as if these two deities gave you not sufficient where upon you might live? what! are you not abashed to mingle at your tables pleasant frutes with bloudie murder? You call lions and libards savage beasts; meane while your selves are stained with bloudshed, giving no place to them in crueltie, for where as they doe worie and kill other beasts, it is for verie necessitie and need of food; but you doe it for daintie fare, for when wee have slaine either lions or wolves in defence of our selves, we eat them not but let them lie: But they be the innocent, the harmelesse, the gentle and tame creatures, which have neither teeth to bite, nor pricke to sting withall, which we take and kill, although nature seemeth to have created them, onely for beautie and delight: [Much like as if a man seeing Nilus overflowing overflowing his banks, and filling all the countrey about with running water, which is generative and frutefull, would not praise with admiration the propertie of that river, causing to spring and grow so many faire and goodly fruits, and the same so necessarie for mans life; but if he chance to espie a crocodill swimming, or an aspick creeping and gliding downe, or fume venemous flie, hurtfull and noisome beasts all, blameth the said river upon that occasion, and saith that they be causes sufficient, that of necessitie he must complaine of the thing: Or verily, when one seeing this land and champian countrey overspred with good and beautifull frutes, charged also and replenished with eares of corne, should perceive casting his eie over those pleasant corne fields, here & there an eare of darnel, choke-ervil, or some such unhappie weed among, should there upon foreare to reape and carie in the said corne, and forgoe the benefit of a plentifull harvest, & find fault therewith: Semblably standeth the case when one seeth the plea of an oratour in anie cause or action,who with a full and forcible streame of eloquence, endevoureth to save his client out of the danger of death, or otherwise to proove and verifie the charges and imputations of certaine crimes; this oration (I say) or eloquent speech of his, running not simplie and nakedly, but carrying with it many and sundrie affections of all sorts, which he imprinteth in the minds and hearts of the hearers or judges, which being many also, and those divers and different, he is to turne, to bend and change, or otherwise, to dulce, appease and staie; if he I say should anon passe over arid not consider the principall issue, and maine point of the cause, and busie himself in gathering out some by-speeches besides the purpose, or haply some phrases improper and impertinent, which the oration of some advocate with the flowing course thereof, hath caried downe with it, lighting thereupon, and falling with the rest of his speech.] But we are nothing mooved either with the faire and beautifull colour, or the sweet and tunable voice, or the quicknesse and subtiltie of spirit, or the neat and cleane life, or the vivacitie of wit and understanding, of these poore feelly creatures; and for a little peece of flesh we take away their life, we bereave them of thier sunne and of light, cutting short that race of life which nature had limited and prefixed for them; and more than so ,those lamentable and trembling voices which they utter for feare, we suppose to be inarticulate or unsignificant sounds, and nothing lesse than pitifull full praiers, supplications, pleas & justifications of those poore innocent creatures, who in their language, everie one of them crie in this manner: If thou be forced upon necessitie, I beseech thee not to save my life: but if disordinate lust moove thee thereto, spare me: in case thou hast a mind simply to eat on my flesh, kill me: but if it be for that thou wouldest feed more delicately, hold thy hand and let me live. O monstrous crueltie! It is an horrible sight to see the table of rich men onely, stand served and furnished with viands, set out by cooks and victuallers that dresse the flesh of dead bodies; but most horrible it is to see the same taken up, for that the reliques and broken meats remaining be farre more than that which is eaten: To what purpose then were those silly beasts slaine? Now there be others, who making spare of the viands served on the table, will in no hand that they should be cut or sliced; sparing them when as they be nothing els but bare flesh; whereas they spared them not whiles they were living beasts: But forasmuch as we have heard that the same men hold and say: That nature hath directed them to the eating of flesh; it is plaine and evident, that this cannot accord with mans nature: And first and formost this appeereth by the very fabrick and composition of his bodie: for it resembleth none of those creatures whom nature hath made for to feed on flesh, considering they have neither hooked bil, no hauke-pointed tallans, they have no sharpe and rough teeth, nor stomack so strong, or so hot breath and spirit, as to be able to concoct and digest the heany masse of raw flesh: And if there were naught else to be alledged, nature her-selfe by the broadnesse and united equallity of our teeth, by our small mouth, our soft toong, the imbecillitie of naturall heat, and spirits serving for concoction, sheweth sufficiently that she approoveth not of mans usage to eat flesh, but dissavoreth and disclaimeth the same: And if you obstinately maintaine and defend, that nature hath made you for to eat such viands; then, that which you minde to eat first kill your selfe, even your owne selfe (I say) without using any blade, knife, bat, club, axe, or hatchet: And even as beares, lions and woolves, slay a beast according as they meane to eat it; even so kill thou a beese, by the bit of thy teeth; slay me a swine with the helpe of thy mouth and jawes; teare in peeces a lambe or an hare with thy nailes; and when thou hast so done, eat it up while it is alive, like as beasts doe; but if thou staiest untill they be dead ere thou eate them, and art abashed to chase with thy teeth the life that presently is in the flesh witch thou eatest; why doest thou against nature eat that which had life? and yet, when it is deprived of life, and fully dead, there is no man hath the heart to eat the same as it is; but they cause it to be boiled, & to be roasted; they alter it with fire, and many drogues and spices, changing, disguising, and quenching (as it were) the horror of the murder, with a thousand devices of seasoning; to the end that the sense of tasting being beguiled and deceived by a number of sweet sauces and pleasant conditure, might admit and receive that which it abhorreth, and is contrary unto it. Certes it was a pretie conceit which was reported by a Laconian, who having brought in his Inne or hostelrie, a little fish, gave it, as it should seeme, to the Inkeeper for to be dressed; but when hee called unto him for vineger, cheese, and oyle to doe it withall: If (quoth the Laconian) I had that which tho demandest of me, I would never have bought this fish. But we contrariwise, for to please our delicate tooth, are so delighted in slaughter and carnage, that flesh we call our viand; and yet then we have need of other viands for the very dressing of flesh it selfe, mixing and adding thereto, oile, wine, honie, the prickle or sauce garum and vineger, embalming (as it were) and burying a dead corps with Sytiake spices and Arabicke sauces. And verily, when our flesh meats after this maner be mortified, made tender, and in some sort putrified, our naturall heat hath much adoe to concoct the same, and being not able in deed to digest them perfitly, it ingendereth in us dangerous heaviness and crudities apt to breed diseases. Diogenes upon a time was so rash, that he durst eat a polype or pourcuttle fish all raw, because he would have taken away the use and helpe of fire in dressing such meats; and there being certeine priest and many other men standing about him, when he covered his head with his cloake, and put the flesh of the said pouple to his mouth, he said unto them all; For your sake it is that I hazard my selfe thus as I doe, and adventure this jeopardie. Now by Jupiter, this was a proper perill in deed, and a doutie danger, was it not? for this Philosopher heere exposed not himslefe to any perillous hazard, as Pelopidas did, for recovery of the Thebans libertie; nor as Armodius and Aristogiton, for the freedome of Athens: who thus wrestled with a raw poulpe fish in his stomacke, and all to make the life of man more beastlike and savage. Well then, plaine it is that the eating of flesh is not onley unnaturall in regard of the bodie, but also by repletion, fulnesse and satietie, it maketh the soule fat and grosse; for the drinking of wine and feeding upon flesh meats to the full, howsoever it may seeme to cause the bodie to be more able and strong, yet surely the minde it doth enfeeble and weaken. And left I should he thought a professed enemie to those who practise the exercise of the bodie named Athleticæ I will use the domesticall examples of mine owne countrey: for the inhabitants of Attica do tearme us of Bæotia, fat-backs, grosse and senselesse, yea, blockish sots, principally for our ranke and large feeding; like as one said:

Of trueth these men, in judgement mine,
Be nothing els but franked swine.

And as Menander wrote in one place:

With fat their cheeks be puft and swolne;
See, see their chaps how they be bolne.

As also Pindarus:

They plie thier jawes, they feed amaine,
That even their cheeks do shine againe.

But according to Heraclitus, the drie soule seemeth to be the wisest; for know thus much moreover; that emptie, tunnes, pipes or barrels, resound when they be knocked upon; whereas if they be full, they answer not againe to the knocks or stroaks given them: brasse pannes or coppers which be thin & slender, render sounds, and ring all about untill such time as one come and with his hand seerne to stop and dull the stroke that otherwise went round about: The eie filled with superfluous humiditie, becommeth dim and darke; neither hath it the full strength and power to performe his office. When we behold the sunne through a moist aire, and a number of thick mists, and grosse undigested vapors, we see him not in his owne nature pure, cleere, and bright; but as it were in the bottome of a cloud, all duskish, and casting foorth thicke wandring and dispersed beames; And even so through a bodie troubled with vapors, full fedde overcharged with nutriments, of unkind and strange viands, it cannot chuse but all the light and shining brightness of the soule which is naturall, should become dusked and troubled, having no radiant setled splendour, able to pierce throughly to the ends and externities of subtile and fine objects, hardly to be discerned, but the same is wandering, unsteadie and dispersed.

But setting all these matters aside, is it not, thinke you, a right commendable thing to be acquainted and accustomed to humanitie? for who would ever finde in his heart to abuse & wrong a man, who is affectionate, gentle, and milde, to the very beasts which are of a strange kind from us, and have no communication of reason with us? Three daies agoe, I alledged and cited in my disputation a testimonie of Xenocrates to this purpose; and namely: How the Athenians condemned him to pay a round fine, who had slaied a quick ramme: And in very truth, he that tormenteth and putteth to paine one that is living, is not in my conceit woorse than he that taketh the life away and killeth him; Howbeit, as farre as I can see, more sense and feeling we have of such things as be unusuall and against custome, than unnaturall and contrarie unto kinde: But those reasons which I then delivered, smell haply of some grossenesse, and were too triviall; for I feare and am loth to touch and set abroch in these my discourses, that great and high principle, that deepe and mysticall cause of this our position: That we ought not to eat flesh; for that I say the hidden secret and original thereof is so incredible to base and timorous persons, as Plato saith, and to such as favour of nothing but of earthly and mortall matters; and heerein I fare much like unto the pilot and master of the ship, who in a tempest is afraid to put his ship to sea; or unto a poet, who dareth not set up his fabrick or engin in the theater, all while the stage or pageant is turned and caried round about: And yet peradventure it were not amisse in this place to resound and pronounce aloud those verses of Empedocles, * * * . For under covert tearmes he doth allegorize and give us to understand; that the soules heere, are tied and fastened to mortall bodies, by way of punishment, for that they have beene murderers, have eaten flesh, devoured one another, and beene fed by mutuall slaughter and carnage: And yet this seemeth to be an opinion more ancient than Empedocles: for those fictions of Poets and touching the dismembring of Bacchus and the outragious attempts of the Tyrans against him, and how they tasted of flesh murdred, as also of their punishment, and how they were smitten with lightning, they be meere fables: the hidden mythologie whereof, tendeth to that renovation of birth or resurrection; for surely that brutish and reasonlesse part of our soule which is violent, disordered, and not divine, but divelish and dæmoniack, the auncient philosophers called Titans; and this is that which is tormented, and suffereth judiciall punishment.

OF EATING FLESH.

The second Declamation.

Reason would, that we should be fresh dispose, and readie in will, in mind and thought, to heare the discourse against this mustie and unfavorie custome of eating flesh: For hard it is, as Cato was woont to say, to preach unto the belly that hath no eares; and besides wee have all drunke of the cup of custome, resembling that of Circe which

Compounded is of dolors griefes and paines,
Of sorrowes, woes, and of deceitfull traines.

Neither is it an easie matter for them to cast up againe the hooke of the appetite to eat flesh, who have swollowed it downe into their entrals, and are transported and full of the love of pleasures and delights: But well and happie it were for us, if, as the manner is of the Aegyptians, so soone as men are dead, to paunch them, and when their belly and bowels be taken foorth, to mangle, cut and slice the same against the sunne, and then to fling them away, as being the cause of all sinnes that they have committed: so we would first cut away from ourselves all our gourmandise, gluttonie, and murdering of innocent creatures, that we might afterwards lead the rest of our life pure and holy; considering that it is not the belly it selfe that by murder defileth us; but polluted it is by our intemperance. But say, it is not in our power to effect thus much, or be it, that upon an inveterate custome, we are ashamed in this point to be innocent and faultlesse; yet lest us at leastwise commit sinne in measure, and trangresse with reason: Let us I say eat flesh, but so, as we be driven thereto for verie hunger, and not drawen to it by licorous tooth, to satisfie our necessitie, and not to feed our greedie and delicate humour: kill we a beast, howbeit with some griefe of heart, with some commiseration and pitty; and not of a proud and insolent spirit, ne yet of a murderous minde; as men doe now adaies, after many and divers sorts: For some in killing of swine or porkets, thrust them in with red-hot spits; to the end that the bloud being shed and quenched as it were by the tincture of the firie iron, running through the body, might cause the flesh forsooth to be more tender and delicate: ye shall have other leape upon the udders and paps of the poore sowes ready to farrow, and trample upon their bellies and teats with their feet, that the bloud, the milke, and the congealed bag of the yoong pigges, knit within the dammes wombe, being all jumbled, confused and blended together, even amidde the painfull pangs of farrowing (O Jupiter Piacularis they might make ( I would not els) a most deintie dish of meat, and devoure the most corrupt and putrified part of the poore beast: many there are who have a device to stitch and sowe up the eies of cranes and swannes, and when they have so done, to mew them up in a darke place, and so feed them, cramming them with strange compositions and pastes made of dried figges; but wot you why? because their flesh should be more deintie and pleasant: whereby it appeareth evidently, that it is not for need of nourishment, nor for want and necessitie; but even for sacietie, wantonnesse, sumptuous curiosities, and superfluous excesse, that of horrible injustice and wickednesse, they make their pleasure and delight: and like as the filthy lecherous person, who is unsatiable in the pleasure of women, after he hath assaied many, runneth on headlong still, roving and ranging every way, and yet his unbrideled and untamed lust is not yet satisfied, but hee falleth to perpetrate such horrible villanies as are not once to be named; even so intemperance in meats, when it hath passed once the bounds of nature, and limits of necessitie, proceedeth to outrage and crueltie, searching all means how to varie and change the disordinate appetite; for the organs and instruments of our senses, by a fellow feeling and contagion of maladies, are affected one by another, yea, and runne into disorder and sinne together, through intemperance, when they rest not countented with the measure assigned them by nature: Thus the hearing being out of frame and sicke, or not guided by reason, marreth musicke; the feeling when it is degenerate into an effeminate delicacie, seeketh filthily after wanton ticklings, touchings, and frictious handling of women; the same vice of intemperance hath taught the eiesight not to be contented with beholding morisks, pyrrhick, or warlike dances, nor other lawdable and decent gestures, ne yet to see and view faire pictures and goodly statues, but to esteeme the death and murder of men, their mortall wounds, bloudie sights, and deadly combats, to be the best sights and spectacles that can be devised, And heereupon it is, that upon such excessive fare & superfluity at the table, there ensue ordinarily wanton loves; upon lecherie and filthy venerie, there followeth beastly talke; these baudie ballads and stinking tales, be accompanied commonly with hideous sights, & monstrous shewes ; lastly, these horrible spectacles have attending upon them, crueltie and inhumane impassibilitie, even in the cases of verie mankind. Heereupon it ws that Lycurgus the divine law-giver, in those three ordinances of his which he called Rhetra, commanded that the dores, roufes and sinials of houses, should be made with the saw & ax onely, & no other instrument besides thereto emploied; which he did not, I assure you, for any hatred at all that he conceived against augers, wimbles, twibils, or other tooles for joyners or carvers worke; but he knew well inough, that a man would never bring among such simple frames a gilded bedstead, nor venture to carrie into an house so plainly built, silver tables, hangings, carpets and coverings of rich tapestrie died with purple, or any precious stones; and he wist full well, that with such an house, with such bedsteads, tables and cups, a frugall supper and a simple dinner would agree and sort best. For to say a truth, upon the beginning and foundation of a disordinate diet, and superfluous kind of life; all maner of delcacie and costly curiositie useth to follow

Like as the suckling foale, alway
Runnes with the damme, and doth not stay.

What supper then, is not to be counted sumptuous, for which there is evermore killed some living creature or other; for doe we thinke little of the dispense of a soule? and suppose we, that the losse of life is not costly? I do not now say, that it was peradventure the soule of a mother, a father, some friend, or a sonne, as Empedocles gave it out; but surely a soule endued with sense, with seeing, hearing, apprehension, understanding, witte and discretion, such as nature hatn given to each living creature, sufficient to seeke and get that which is good for it, and likewise to avoid and shun whatsoever is hurtfull and contrary unto it. Consider now a little, whether those philosophers that teach and will us to eat our children, our friends, our fathers and wives when they are dead, doe make us more gentle and fuller of humanitie, than Pythagoras and Empedocles, who accustome and acquaint us to be kind and just, even to other creatures. Well, you mock and laugh at him that maketh conscience to eat of a mutton; and shall not we (say they) laugh a good and make sport when we see one cutting and chopping pieces of his father or mother being dead, and sending away some thereof to his friend who are absent, and inviting such as be present and neere at hand, to come and make merrie with the rest, causing such joints and pieces of flesh to be served up to the table, without any spare at all? But it may be, that we offend now, and commit some fault in handling these books, having not beforehand clensed our hands, mundified our eies, purified our feet, and purged our eares; unlesse perhaps this be their clensing and expiation, to devise & discourse of such things with sweet & pleasant words, which as Plato saith, wash away all salt & brackish hearing: but if a man should set these books & arguments in parallell opposition or comparison one with another; he would judge that some of them were the Philosophie of the Scythians, Tartarians, Sagidians, and Melanchlænians, of whom when Herodotus writeth, he is taken for a liar; and as for the sentences and opinions of Pythagoras and Empedocles, they were the very lawes, ordinances, statutes, and judgements of the auncient Greeks, according to which they framed their lives, towit: That there were betweene us and brute beasts certeine common rights: who were they then, that afterwards otherwise ordeined?

Even they who first of iron and steele,
mischievous swords did forge:
And of poore labouring ox at plough,
began to cut the gorge.

For even thus also began tyrants to commit murders; like as the first in old time, they killed at Athens one notorious and most wicked sycophant, named Epitedeins; so they did by a second, and likewise a third: now the Athenians being thus acquainted to see men put to death; saw afterwards Niceratus the sonne of Nicias murdred; Theramenes also the great commander and captaine generall; yea and Polemarchus the philosopher, Semblably, men began at first to eat the flesh of some savage and hurtfull beast, then some fowles and fish were snared and caught with nets, and consequently, crueltie (being fleshed as it were, exercised and inured in these and such like slaughters) proceeded even to the poore labouring ox, to the silly sheepe that doth clad and trimme our bodies, yea, and to the house-cocke: and thus men by little and little augmenting their insatiable greedinesse, never staied untill they came to manslaughter, to murder, yea, and to bloudie battels. But if a man can not proove nor make demonstration by sound reasons, that soules in their resurrections and new nativites meet with common bodies; so as that which now is reasonable, becommeth afterwards reasonlesse, and likewise that which at this present is wild and savage, commeth to be by another birth and regeneration, tame and gentle againe; and that nature transmuteth and translateth all bodies, dislodging and replacing the soule of one in another,

And cladding them with robes unknowen,
Of other flesh, as with their owne.

Are not these reasons yet a leastwise sufficient to reclaime and divert men from this unbrideled intemperance of murding dumb beasts? namely, that it breedeth maladies, crudities, heavineness and indigestion in the bodies, that it marreth and corrupteth the soule, which naturally is given to the contemplation of high and heavenly things? to wit, when we have taken up a woont and custome, not to feast a friend of stranger who commeth to visit us, unlesse we shed bloud; and cannot celebrate a marriage dinner, or make merrie with our neighbours and friends without committing murder? And albeit the said proofe and argument of the transmigration of soules into sundrie bodies, be not sufficiently declared, so as it may deserve to be credited and beleeved; yet surely the conceit and opinion thereof, ought to work some scruple and feare in our harts, and in some sort hold us in & stay our hands. For like as when two armies encounter one another in a night battell; if one chaunce to light upon a man fallen upon the ground whose bodie is all covered and hidden with armour, and present his sword to cut his throat, or runne him through, and therewith heare another crying unto him, that he knoweth not certeinly, but thinketh and suppoieth that the partie lying along is his brother, his sonne, his father, or tent-fellow; whether were it better, that he giving eare and credit to this conjecture and suspicion (false though it be) should spare and forebeare an enemie for a friend, or rejecting that which had no sure and evident proofe, kill one of his friends in stead of an enemie? I suppose there is not one of you all but will say, that the later of these were a most grosses and leud part. Behold moreover Merope in the tragedy when she lifteth up her ax for to strike her own sonne, taking him to be the murderer of her sonne, and saying withall:

Have at thy head, for now I trow,
I shall thee give a deadly blow.

what a stirre and trouble she maketh over all the theater? how she causeth the haire to stand upright upon the heads of the spectators, for feare lest she should prevent the old man who was about to take hold of her arme, and so wound the guiltlesse yoong man her sonne? But if peradventure in this case there should have stood another aged man fastby, crying unto her: Strike hardly, for it is your enemie, and a third contrariwise, saying: Strike not in any wise, it is your owne sonne; whether had beene the greater and more grievous sinne, to let goe the revengement of her enemie for doubt that he was her sonne, or to commit filicide and murder her sonne indeed, for the anger the bare unto her enemie? When as therefore there is neither hatred nor anger that driveth us to doe a murder; when neither revenge, nor feare of our owne safetie and life mooveth us, but even for our pleasure we have a poore sheepe lying under our hand with the throat turned upward, a philosopher of the one side should say: Cut the throat, for its is a brute beast, and another admonish us on the other side, saying: Stay your hand and take heed what you doe; for what know you to the contrarie, whether in that sheepe be the soule lodged of some kinsman of yours, or peradventure of some God? Is the danger (before God) all one and the same, whether I refuse to eat of the flesh, or beleeve not that I kill my child or some one of my kinsfolke?

But surely the Stoicks are not equally matched in this fight for the defence of eating flesh: For what is the reason that they so band themselves, and be so open mouthed in the maintenance of the belly and the kitchin? what is the cause that condemning pleasures as they doe, for an effeminate thing, and not to be held either good or indifferent, no nor so much as familiar and agreeable to nature, they stand so much in the patronage of those things that make to the pleasure and delight of feeding? And yet by all consequence, reason would, that considering they chase and banish from the table, all sweet perfumes and odoriferous ointments, yea, and al pastrie worke, and banketting junkets, they should be rather offended at the sight of bloud and flesh. But now, as if by their precise philosophicall rules, they would controule our day books and journals of our ordinarie expences, they cut off all the cost bestowed upon our table in things needlesses and superfluous; meane while they find no fault with that which favoureth of bloudshed and crueltie in this superfluitie of table furniture: We doe not indeed, (say they) because there is no communication of rights betweene beasts and us; but a man might answer them againe verie well. No more is there betweene us and perfumes or other forraine and exoticall sauces, and yet you would have us absteine from them, rejecting and blaming on all sides, that which in any pleasure is neither profitable nor needfull. But let us I pray you consider upon this point a little neerer, to wit, whether there be any communitie in right and justice, betweene us and unreasonable creatures or no? and let us doe it not subtilly and artificially, as the captious manner is of these sophisters in their disputations; but rather after a gentle and familiar sort, having an eie unto our owne passions and affections, let us reason and decide the matter wit our selves.

THE

PHILOSOPHIE,

commonlie called,

THE

MORALS

WRITTEN BY

the learned Philosopher

PLUTARCH

of Chæronea.



Translated out of Greeke into English, and conferred
with the Latine translations and the French,
by PHILEMON HOLLAND of
Coventrie, Doctor in
Physicke.

Whereunto are annexed the Summaries necessary to be
read before every Treastie.



AT LONDON
Printed by Arnold Hatfield.
1603