Thesauros Literature biography Πότερα τῶν ζῴων φρονιμώτερα τὰ χερσαῖα ἢ τὰ ἔνυδρα

Πότερα τῶν ζῴων φρονιμώτερα τὰ χερσαῖα ἢ τὰ ἔνυδρα

Πότερα τῶν ζῴων φρονιμώτερα τὰ χερσαῖα ἢ τὰ ἔνυδρα Plutarch
7 AUTOBULUS. This, my friend, has been spoken from the heart. Cf. Euripides, frag. 412 (Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 486); quoted more completely in Mor. 63 a. We certainly must not allow philosophers, as though they were women in difficult labour, to put about their necks a charm for speedy delivery so that they may bring justice to birth for us easily and without hard labour. For they themselves do not concede to Epicurus,Usener, Epicurea, p. 351; see Bailey on Lucretius, ii. 216 ff.; Mor. 1015 b-c. for the sake of the highest considerations, a thing so small and trifling as the slightest deviation of a single atom-which would permit the stars and living creatures to slip in by chance and would preserve from destruction the principle of free will. But, seeing that they bid him demonstrate whatever is not obvious or take as his starting-point something that is obvious, how are they in any position to make this statement about animalsThat they are irrational. a basis of their own account of justice, when it is neither generally accepted nor otherwise demonstrated by them?For this difficult and corrupt passage the admirable exposition and reconstruction of F. H. Sandbach (Class. Quart. xxxv, p. 114) has been followed. For justice has another way to establish itself, a way which is neither so treacherous nor so precipitous, nor is it a route lined with the wreckage of obvious truths. It is the road which, under the guidance of Plato, Laws, 782 c. my son and your companion,Plutarch himself; cf. Mor. 734 e. Soclarus, points out to those who have no love of wrangling, but are willing to be led and to learn. For certain it is that EmpedoclesDiels-Kranz, Frag. der Vorsok. i, p. 366, frag. B 135; and see Aristotle, Rhetoric, i, 13. 2 (1373 b 14). and HeraclitusDiels-Kranz, op. cit. i, p. 169, frag. B 80; Bywater, frag. 62. accept as true the charge that man is not altogether innocent of injustice when he treats animals as he does; often and often do they lament and exclaim against Nature, declaring that she is Necessity and War, that she contains nothing unmixed and free from tarnish, that her progress is marked by many unjust inflictions. As an instance, say. even birth itself springs from injustice, since it is a union of mortal with immortal, and the offspring is nourished unnaturally on members torn from the parent.

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