The Complete Essays (78 page)

[B]
Non alia longe ratione atque ipsa videtur
Protrahere ad gestum pueros infantia linguae
.

[In a not dissimilar way, the very inability to speak leads infants to make gestures.]
⁵⁰

[A] And why not? Our deaf-mutes have discussions and arguments, telling each other stories by means of signs.
⁵¹
I have seen some who are so nimble and so practised at this that they truly lack nothing necessary for making themselves perfectly understood. After all, lovers quarrel, make it up again, beg favours, give thanks, arrange secret meetings and say everything, with their eyes.

[A1]
E’l silentio ancor suole
Haver prieghi e parole
.

[Silence itself can talk and beg requests.]
⁵²

[C] And what about our hands? With them we request, promise, summon, dismiss, menace, pray, supplicate, refuse, question, show astonishment, count, confess, repent, fear, show shame, doubt, teach, command, incite, encourage, make oaths, bear witness, make accusations, condemn, give absolution, insult, despise, defy, provoke, flatter, applaud, bless, humiliate, mock, reconcile, advise, exalt, welcome, rejoice, lament; show sadness, grieve, despair; astonish, cry out, keep silent and what not else, with a variety and multiplicity rivalling the tongue.

What of the head? We summon, dismiss, admit, reject, deny, welcome, honour, venerate, disdain, request, refuse, rejoice, lament, fondle, tease, submit, brave, exhort, menace, affirm and inquire.

And what of our eyebrows or our shoulders? None of their movements fails to talk a meaningful language which does not have to be learned, a language common to us all. This suggests (given the variety and different
usage among spoken languages) that it is, rather, sign-language that should be judged the ‘property’ of Man.
⁵³

I shall leave aside what Necessity can suddenly teach men in individual cases of particular need, as well as finger-alphabets, grammars of gesture and those branches of learning conducted and expressed through them and, finally, those peoples who, according to Pliny, have no other tongue.
⁵⁴
[B] An ambassador from the city of Abdera, after delivering a long address to King Agis of Sparta, asked him: ‘Sire, what reply do you want me to bear back to our citizens?’ – ‘That I allowed you to say all you wanted, for as long as you wanted, without uttering a word.’ Was that not an eloquent and most intelligible silence?
⁵⁵

[A] After all, what aspects of our human competence cannot be found in the activities of animals? Is there any form of body politic more ordered, more varied in its allocation of tasks and duties or maintained with greater constancy than that of the bees? Can we conceive that an allocation of tasks and activities, so striking for its orderliness, should be conducted without reasoned discourse and foresight?

His quidam signis atque haec exempla sequuti,
Esse apibus partem divinae mentis et haustus
Aethereos dixere
.

[From such signs and examples men conclude that bees have been given some part of the divine Mind and have drunk Aethereal draughts.]
⁵⁶

Take the swallows, when spring returns; we can see them ferreting through all the corners of our houses; from a thousand places they select one, finding it the most suitable place to make their nests: is that done without judgement or discernment? And then when they are making their nests (so beautifully and so wondrously woven together) can birds use a square rather than a circle, an obtuse angle rather than a right angle, without knowing their properties or their effects? Do they bring water and then clay without realizing that hardness can be softened by dampening? They cover the floors of their palaces with moss or down; do they do so
without foreseeing that the tender limbs of their little ones will lie more softly there and be more comfortable? Do they protect themselves from the stormy winds and plant their dwellings to the eastward, without recognizing the varying qualities of those winds and considering that one is more healthy for them than another? Why does the spider make her web denser in one place and slacker in another, using this knot here and that knot there, if she cannot reflect, think or reach conclusions?

We are perfectly able to realize how superior they are to us in most of their works and how weak our artistic skills are when it comes to imitating them. Our works are coarser, and yet we are aware of the faculties we use to construct them: our souls use all their powers when doing so. Why do we not consider that the same applies to animals? Why do we attribute to some sort of slavish natural inclination works that surpass all that we can do by nature or by art?

In this, we thoughtlessly give them a very great superiority over us: we make Nature take them by the hand and guide them with a mother’s gentle care in all the actions and advantages of their lives; we, on the other hand, are abandoned by Nature to chance and to Fortune, obliged to seek, by art, all things necessary for our conservation; meanwhile, Nature refuses us the very means which would enable us to reach, by education or intelligent application, the level reached by the natural industry of other creatures. In this way we make their brutish stupor have every advantage over our divine intelligence!
⁵⁷

In truth, on this account, we would be right to treat Nature as a very unjust stepmother. But it is not so. We do not live under so misshapen or so lawless a constitution:
⁵⁸
Nature clasps all her creatures in a universal embrace; there is not one of them which she has not plainly furnished with all means necessary to the conservation of its being.

There are commonplace lamentations which I hear men make (as the unruly liberty of their opinions raises them above the clouds and then tumbles them down lower than the Antipodes): We are, they say, the only animal abandoned naked on the naked earth; we are in bonds and fetters, having nothing to arm or cover ourselves with but the pelts of other creatures; Nature has clad all others with shells, pods, husks, hair, wool, spikes, hide, down, feathers, scales, fleece or silk, according to the several necessities of their being; she has armed them with claws, teeth and horns for assault and defence; and, as is proper to them, has herself taught them
to swim, to run, to fly or to sing. Man, on the other hand, without an apprenticeship, does not know how to walk, talk, eat or to do anything at all but wail:
⁵⁹

[B]
Tum porro puer, ut saevis projectus ab undis
Navita, nudus humi jacet, infans, indigus omni
Vitali auxilio, cum primum in luminis oras
Nixibus ex alvo matris natura profudit;
Vagituque locum lugubri complet, ut aequum est
Cui tantum in vita restet transire malorum.
At variae crescunt pecudes, armenta, feraeque,
Nec crepitacula eis opus est, nec cuiquam adhibenda est
Almae nutricis blanda atque infracta loquella;
Nec varias quaerunt vestes pro tempore coeli;
Denique non armis opus est, non moenibus altis,
Queis sua tutentur, quando omnibus omnia large
Tellus ipsa parit, naturaque deadala rerum
.

[Then the child, like a sailor cast up by raging seas, lies naked on the earth, unable to talk, bereft of everything that would help him to live, when Nature first tears him struggling from his mother’s womb and casts him on the shore of light. He fills the place with his mournful cries – rightly, for one who still has to pass through so many evils. Yet all sorts of cattle, farm animals as well as wild beasts, thrive; they need no rattles nor the winsome baby language of the gentle nurse; they do not need clothing varying with the weather; and finally they need no weapons nor lofty walls to make them safe, since Earth herself and skilful Nature give all of them, amply, everything they need.]
⁶⁰

[A] Such plaints are false. There are more uniform relationships and greater fairness in the constitution of this world.
⁶¹
Our skin, like theirs, is adequately provided with means to resist intemperate weather with firmness: witness those many peoples who have yet to acquire a taste for clothing. [B] Our ancient Gauls wore hardly any clothes: nor do the Irish, our neighbours, under a sky so cold.

[A] But we can judge that from ourselves; all parts of the body which we are pleased to leave uncovered to air and wind prove able to endure it: face, feet, hands, legs, shoulders, head, as custom suggests. If there be a part
of us so weak that it does seem that it has to fear the cold it is our belly, in which digestion takes place: yet our forefathers left it uncovered – and in our society ladies (however soft and delicate they are) occasionally go about with it bare down to the navel. Binding and swaddling up children is not necessary. The mothers of Sparta used to bring up their children with complete freedom of movement for their limbs, without binders or fastenings.
⁶²
Infant cries are common to most other animals; nearly all can be seen wailing and whining long after they are born; such behaviour is quite appropriate to the helplessness that they feel. As for eating, it is natural to us and to them; it does not have to be learned.

[B]
Sentit enim vim quisque suam quam possit abuti
.

[For every creature feels the powers at its disposal.]
⁶³

[A] Does anyone doubt that a child, once able to feed himself, would know how to go in search of food? And Earth, with no farming and with none of our arts, produces quite enough for his needs and offers it to him – perhaps not at all seasons, but neither does she do that for the beasts: witness the stores we can see ants or others provide for the barren season of the year. Those peoples we have recently discovered, so abundantly furnished with food and natural drinks needing no care or toil, have taught us that there is other food beside bread and that Mother Nature can provide us plenteously, without ploughing, with all we need – indeed (as is likely) more straightforwardly and more richly than she does nowadays, when we have brought in our artificial skills.

Et tellus nitidas fruges vinetaque laeta
Sponte sua primum mortalibus ipsa creavit;
Ipsa dedit dulces foetus et pabula laeta,
Quae nunc vix nostro grandescunt aucta labore,
Conterimusque boves et vires agricolarum
.

[And Earth herself first willingly provided grain and cheerful vines; she gave sweet produce and good pastures, such as, with all our increased toil, we can but scarcely make to grow; we wear out oxen and the strength of farmers…]
⁶⁴

The lawless flood of our greed outstrips everything we invent to try and slake it.

As for armaments, we have more natural ones than most other animals do, as well as a greater variety in our movements; we draw greater service from them, too – naturally, without being taught. Men trained to fight naked throw themselves into danger just as our men do. Although some beasts are better armed than we are, we are better armed than others. And we are given to covering the body with acquired means of protection because Nature teaches us to do so instinctively.

To see that this is true, note how the elephant sharpens to a point the teeth which it uses to fight with (for it has special teeth reserved for fighting, and never used for other tasks); when bulls come out to fight they throw up dust and scatter it round about; wild boars whet their tusks; and the ichneumon, before coming to grips with the crocodile, takes mud, kneaded and compressed, and smears it over itself as a crust to serve as body-armour. Why do we not say, therefore, that arming ourselves with sticks and iron bars is equally natural?
⁶⁵

As for the power of speech, it is certain that, if it is not natural, then it cannot be necessary. And yet I believe (though it would be difficult to assay it) that if a child, before learning to talk, were brought up in total solitude, then he would have some sort of speech to express his concepts; it is simply not believable that Nature has refused to us men a faculty granted to most other animals; we can see they have means of complaining, rejoicing, calling on each other for help or inviting each other to love; they do so by meaningful utterances: if that is not talking, what is it? [B] How could they fail to talk among themselves, since they talk to us and we to them? How many ways we have of speaking to our dogs and they of replying to us! We use different languages again, and make different cries, to call birds, pigs, bulls and horses; we change idiom according to each species.

[AI]
Così per entro loro schiera bruna
S’ammusa l’una con l’altra formica
Forse à spiar lor via, e lor fortuna
.

[As one ant from their dark battalion stops to talk to another, perhaps asking the way or how things are faring.]

And does not Lactantius appear to attribute not only speech to animals, but laughter too?

[A] The different varieties of speech found among men of different countries can be paralleled in animals of the same species. On this subject
Aristotle cites the ways in which the call of the partridge varies from place to place.