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| Chapter LXXXVI
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Chapter
LXXXVI.
Immediately after this, as if doing his utmost to
reduce the human race to a still lower position, and to bring them to
the level of the irrational animals, and desiring to omit not a single
circumstance related of the latter which manifests their greatness, he
declares that “in certain individuals among the irrational
creation there exists the power of sorcery;” so that even in this
particular men cannot specially pride themselves, nor wish to arrogate
a superiority over irrational creatures. And the following are
his words: “If, however, men entertain lofty notions
because of their possessing the power of sorcery, yet even in that
respect are serpents and eagles their superiors in wisdom; for they are
acquainted with many prophylactics against persons and diseases, and
also with the virtues of certain stones which help to preserve their
young. If men, however, fall in with these, they think that they
have gained a wonderful possession.” Now, in the first
place, I know not why he should designate as sorcery the knowledge of
natural prophylactics displayed by animals,—whether that
knowledge be the result of experience, or of some natural power of
apprehension;4025
| 4025 φυσικήν
τινα
κατάληψιν. | for the term
“sorcery” has by usage been assigned to something
else. Perhaps, indeed, he wishes quietly, as an Epicurean, to
censure the entire use of such arts, as resting only on the professions
of sorcerers. However, let it be granted him that men do
pride themselves greatly upon the knowledge of such arts, whether they
are sorcerers or not: how can serpents be in this respect wiser
than men, when they make use of the well-known fennel4026
to sharpen their power of vision and to
produce rapidity of movement, having obtained this natural power not
from the exercise of reflection, but from the constitution of their
body,4027
while men do not, like serpents, arrive at
such knowledge merely by nature, but partly by experiment, partly by
reason, and sometimes by reflection and knowledge? So, if eagles,
too, in order to preserve their young in the nest, carry thither the
eagle-stone4028
| 4028 [The ἀετίτης. See Pliny,
N. H., x. 4.] | when they have
discovered it, how does it appear that they are wise, and more
intelligent than men, who find out by the exercise of their reflective
powers and of their understanding what has been bestowed by nature upon
eagles as a gift?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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