On Abstinence from Animal Food

ON ABSTINENCE

A iii

...are accustomed original: "sueuerunt"; this completes the previous page's sentence regarding those who have become accustomed to sparing even plants. But the Epicureans Followers of Epicurus (341–270 BCE), who taught that justice is not an inherent natural law but a social contract designed to prevent mutual harm, recounting a certain lengthy "genealogy" an account of the historical development or evolution of laws, as it were, say that the ancient lawmakers, when they had looked toward the society of life and the mutual actions of humans among themselves, ordained that the slaughter of a human being was impious. They imposed significant penalties on those who committed such an act.

For although there is a certain natural kinship among humans toward one another—arising from a similarity of both form and soul—which ensures that such an animal is not killed as readily as the other animals that are permitted to us, they believe the primary reason why this deed was held to be so impious and detestable was that they judged it did not contribute to the overall constitution of life original: "constitutionem," referring to the stable structure of human society.

For from this origin, those who perceived the utility utility (utilitas): the practical benefit or common advantage that serves as the basis for Epicurean justice of this institution had no need for any other cause to restrain them from such a crime. However, those who could not sufficiently grasp the sense of this matter abstained from mutual slaughter because they were deterred by the magnitude of the punishment.

Both of these, they say, are still seen to happen today. For those who consider the utility of such a decree readily persevere in their duty; whereas those who are unable to perceive it maintain the same behavior only because they are terrified by the threats of the laws. Indeed, some promulgated these threats for the sake of those who were unable to reach a consideration of utility, after the majority had already accepted them. For from the beginning, no law—whether written or unwritten—was established by force,