BOOK II.

A iii

...takes away the very charm original: "gratiam"; completing the sentence from the previous page of life, nor will we be able to provide for ourselves unless we observe the ancient law and definition. For as Hesiod An early Greek poet (c. 700 BCE); the quote is from his work Works and Days says, when Jupiter had distinguished the natures of things and set each kind of animal apart:

To the fish, and the race of birds, and the beasts of the field,
He granted that they might devour one another, since there is no
Justice among them; but to humans he gave the gift of justice,
Making them sharers in equity.

Regarding those with whom we have no legal standing original: "commercium," meaning a mutual social or legal contract for acting justly, we have no reason to fear acting "unjustly" toward them. Indeed, those who reject this reasoning leave no other path for justice—not even a narrow one—that a person might walk. For, as we have already stated, to bar our nature (which is not self-sufficient but stands in need of many things) from the assistance of other animals is nothing less than to utterly destroy life, confining it to a state that is difficult, lacking in all tools, and destitute of necessary things.

Furthermore, they say that those first humans did not live in a very fortunate manner; for superstition does not contain itself within the boundaries of "living animals," but eventually breaks even into the realm of plants. For why is he who slaughters an ox or a sheep acting more unjustly than he who cuts down a fir tree or an oak? Especially if, according to the transformation of the soul: the doctrine of metempsychosis or reincarnation, a soul is also implanted within the stocks of plants themselves. And these are the principal arguments which the Stoics and Peripatetics Followers of Aristotle, known for studying "peripatos" (walkways) of the Lyceum are accustomed to bring—