Who then were the first authors of this opinion, that
we owe no justice to dumb animals?
[p. 14]
Who first beat out accursed steel,
And made the laboring ox a knife to feel.
In the very same manner oppressors and tyrants begin first
to shed blood. For example, the first man that the Athenians ever put to death was one of the basest of all knaves,
whom all thought deserving of death; after him they put
to death a second and a third. After this, being now accustomed to blood, they patiently saw Niceratus the son of
Nicias, and their own general Theramenes, and Polemarchus the philosopher suffer death. Even so, in the beginning, some wild and mischievous beast was killed and eaten,
and then some little bird or fish was entrapped. And the
love of slaughter, being first experimented and exercised
in these, at last passed even to the laboring ox, and the
sheep that clothes us, and to the poor cock that keeps
the house; until by little and little, unsatiableness being
strengthened by use, men came to the slaughter of men,
to bloodshed and wars. Now even if one cannot demonstrate and make out, that souls in their regenerations make
a promiscuous use of all bodies, and that that which is now
rational will at another time be irrational, and that again
tame which is now wild,—for that Nature changes and
transmutes every thing,
With different fleshy coats new clothing all,—
this thing should be sufficient to change and reclaim men,
that it is a savage and intemperate habit, that it brings sickness and heaviness upon the body, and that it inclines the
mind the more brutishly to bloodshed and destruction, when
we have once accustomed ourselves neither to entertain a
guest nor keep a wedding nor to treat our friends without
blood and slaughter.
