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But apart from these considerations, do you not find here a wonderful means of training in social responsibility? Who could wrong a human being when he found himself so gently and humanely disposed toward other non-human creatures? Two days ago in a discussion I quoted the remark of Xenocrates,See Heinze, Xenokrates, p. 151, frag. 99. that the Athenians punished the man who had flayed a ram while it was still alive; yet, as I think, he who tortures a living creature is no worse than he who slaughters it outright. But it seems that we are more observant of acts contrary to convention than of those that are contrary to nature. In that place, then, I made my remarks in a popular vein. I still hesitate, however, to attempt a discussion of the principle underlying my opinion, great as it is, and mysterious and incredible, as Plato Phaedrus, 245 c. says, with merely clever men of mortal opinions, just as a steersman hesitates to shift his courseThe Greek is both difficult and ambiguous; perhaps hesitates to set his ship in motion while a storm is raging. in the midst of a storm, or a playwright to raise his god from the machine in the midst of a play. Yet perhaps it is not unsuitable to set the pitch and announce the theme by quoting some verses of Empedocles.The verses have fallen out, but may be, in part, those quoted infra, 998 c, or a similar passage. By these lines he means, though he does not say so directly, that human souls are imprisoned in mortal bodies as a punishment for murder, the eating of animal flesh, and cannibalism. This doctrine, however, seems to be even older, for the stories told about the sufferings and dismemberment of DionysusSee I. M. Linforth, The Arts of Orpheus, chapter 5, The Dismemberment of Dionysus, and especially pp. 334 ff., on this passage. A good illustration is the fragment of Dionysius in D. L. Page, Greek Literary Papyri, i (L.C.L.), pp. 538-541. and the outrageous assaults of the Titans upon him, and their punishment and blasting by thunderbolt after they had tasted his blood - all this is a myth which in its inner meaning has to do with rebirth. For to that faculty in us which is unreasonable and disordered and violent, and does not come from the gods, but from evil spirits, the ancients gave the name Titans,See Hesiod’s etymology, Theogony, 209 f. For this Greek equivalent of original sin see Shorey on Plato, Laws, 701 c (What Plato Said, p. 629), Mor. 975 b supra; and Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, pp. 155 and 177. that is to say, those that are punished and subjected to correctionThe first discourse breaks off at this point.
