Plato, in his picture of the golden age under Saturn, reckons, among the chief advantages that a man then had, his communication with beasts, of whom, inquiring and informing himself, he knew the true qualities and differences of them all, by which he acquired a very perfect intelligence and prudence, and led his life more happily than we could do. In youth they bud, and afterwards grow to strength, and come to perfection by means of custom. After they had accustomed themselves at Rome to the spectacles of the slaughter of animals, they proceeded to those of the slaughter of men, to the gladiators. We owe justice to men, and graciousness and benignity to other creatures . . They affect but the few in that case.
Presumption is our natural and original disease.
The most calamitous and fragile of all creatures is man, and yet the most arrogant. It is through the vanity of this same imagination that he equals himself to a god, that he attributes to himself divine conditions, that he picks himself out and separates himself from the crowd of other creatures, curtails the just shares of other animals his brethren and companions, and assigns to them only such portions of faculties and forces as seems to him good. We entertain one another with mutuall apish tricks. If I have my houre to begin or to refuse, so hath she hers. It is a matter of divination to guesse in whom the fault is, that we understand not one another.