Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/318

296 and reward, nor could skill of love but for gain and profit? for admired he was in the theatres that thus spake first:

This is the reason (according to the opinion and doctrine of Epicurus) that the father affecteth his son, the mother is tender over her child, and children likewise are kind unto their parents: but set case that brute beasts could both speak and understand language, in some open theatre, and that one called to meet together a sufficient assembly of beeves, horses, dogs and fowls, certes, if their voices were demanded upon this point now in question, he would set down in writing and openly pronounce, that neither bitches loved their whelps, nor mares their foals, hens their chickens, and other fowls their little birds in respect of any reward, but freely and by the instinct of nature: and this would be found a true verdict of his, justified and verified by all those passions and affections which are observed in them: and what a shame and infamy unto mankind is this to grant and avouch, that the act of generation in brute beasts, their conception, their breeding, their painful delivery of their young, and the careful feeding and cherishing of them, be nature's works merely, and duties of gratuity; and contrariwise that in men they be pawns given them for security of interest, hires, gages, and earnest pennies respective to some profit and gain which they draw after them? But surely as this project is not true, so it is not worth the hearing, for nature verily as in savage plants and trees, to wit, wild vines, wild fig-trees, and wild olives, she doth ingenerate certain raw and unperfect rudiments (such as they be) of good and kind fruits; so she hath created in brute beasts a natural love and affection to their young, though the same be not absolute nor fully answerable to the rule of justice, nor yet able to pass farther than the bonds and limits of necessity. As for man, a living creature, endued and adorned with reason, created and made for a civil society, whom she hath brought into the world for to observe laws and justice, to serve, honour and worship the gods, to found cities and govern commonwealths, and therein to exercise and perform all offices of bounty: him she hath bestowed upon noble, generous, fair and fruitful seeds of all these things, to wit, a kind love and tender affection toward his children; and these she followeth still, and persisteth therein, which she infused together with the first