SOURCE: Preus, Anthony. “Biological Theory in Porphyry's De abstinentia.” Ancient Philosophy 3, no. 2 (fall 1983): 149-59.

[In the following essay, Preus discusses two biological theories—providential ecology and the rationality of animals—set forth in On the Abstinence from Animal Food.]

CONTEXT

The earlier Neoplatonists are not famous for their contributions to biological science, for the good reason that they did not do any serious biological investigations.¹ But the secondary literature has ignored the subject even more than it deserves. Although many pages have been written about Neoplatonic theories of the soul, only a few have been devoted to the physiological consequences of the embodiment of souls and even fewer treat the non-psychological parts of the biological investigation.² But there are reasons for thinking that Neoplatonists ought to have said something about biology: Neoplatonists took Plato's Timaeus almost as a sacred text, and the last 40 pages or so of that work are full of suggestions for directions which biological investigation might take.

The middle Platonists took the biological suggestions of the Timaeus quite seriously, and some had interests in biology and medicine which went beyond those confines. Perhaps it would be too obvious to point out that Galen claimed to be a Platonist, and that he tried to synthesize the Timaeus with the Hippocratic medical tradition in his Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato and elsewhere.³ But it is also true that several of the essays in Plutarch's Moralia rely on biological knowledge and show an interest in the character, if not the structure and physiology, of various species of animals. Such essays include: On the Cleverness of Animals, Beasts are Rational, The Eating of Flesh, and The Causes of Natural Phenomena, which last also shows some interest in plants along with much else.

Another middle Platonist treatise, the Epitome of Plato's Doctrines attributed to Alcinous in the manuscripts and to Albinus by most modern scholars, synthesizes Platonic and Aristotelian attitudes toward biological investigation, finding particularly significant the physiological implications of the embodiment of soul. Chapters 17-22 summarize the later pages of the Timaeus and may be taken as typical of the point of view of Platonists of the period.⁴ Not only does Albinus (Alcinous) describe the general structure of the human body and the ways in which the senses work, closely following the theories in the Timaeus, but he even goes on to give a rapid summary of the causes of diseases as presented in Tim. 82-86, the theory of the proportions of the four elements (earth, water, air, fire) and their relationship to the four “humors” (blood, bile, phlegm, and serum).

But the earlier Neoplatonists—Plotinus, Proclus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus—seem not to have paid much attention to the later pages of the Timaeus. The great commentary by Proclus stops well before the biological material begins; Plotinus never refers unambiguously to the latter part of the Timaeus, almost as if he did not care for all those details.⁵ My rapid look at the other early Neoplatonists has uncovered only the vaguest second-hand echoes of Plato's biomedical interests. In the later Neoplatonistic tradition, one does find an increasing interest in biomedical matters; this is perhaps already true in Simplicius and Philoponus, who are led to discuss some biological questions through their reading of Aristotle. Of course the Muslim Neoplatonists were guided in their interpretation of the Timaeus by Galen, so we expect to find discussions of the biomedical issues in their work. Ibn Sina is the outstanding representative of this tendency, but Ibn Rushd knows these pages too.

There is one way in which the interests of the middle Platonists in biological matters continue in the work of the Neoplatonists, and that is in the defense of vegetarianism. Plutarch had a turn at this theme and Porphyry pursues it at length in his treatise, On Abstinence from Animal Food.⁶

The De abstinentia is not primarily a treatise on biology but, despite its non-specialized character, it does contain biological theories of interest to the historian of science and philosophy. Here, if anywhere, we find the notions of biology which were shared by educated people at the time of its composition.⁷

Porphyry begins by summarizing some of the arguments proposed in favor of a carnivorous or omnivorous diet; he deals with some of the arguments immediately, leaving others to later books for longer discussion. In the second Book, he asks whether the habit of sacrificing animals to the gods justifies the consumption of the flesh of animals, and argues that it does not, and, furthermore, that the gods do not really demand the sacrifice of animals. We might think that these comments are uninteresting, since the practice of sacrificing animals to the gods is generally thought to have disappeared as a consequence of the victory of Christianity over ancient paganism. But Esme Wynne-Tyson reminds us, in her introduction to the Thomas Taylor translation, that Aesculapius, as tutelary deity of medicine, continues to demand the sacrifice of countless animals on his altar in the name of scientific research.

Porphyry argues in the third Book that animals are in fact rational and, consequently, are more closely akin to us than we normally suppose. We will return to this topic below. The fourth Book continues an argument already begun in the first, that a meatless diet is more healthful and conducive to the profession of the philosopher. Porphyry also points out that despite claims to the contrary, there have indeed been whole peoples who have lived very well as vegetarians.⁸

PROVIDENTIAL ECOLOGY

In the first Book, Porphyry discusses arguments against vegetarianism proposed by Heraclides Ponticus, Hermarchus, and Claudius of Naples. The arguments of Heraclides are represented as combining Peripatetic and Stoic ideas; they turn primarily on the irrationality of animals, and are refuted mainly in Book III. Hermarchus took an Epicurean position, depending partly on the utilitarian argument that if men kill animals, they will be less likely to kill each other, and partly on the argument that men do not kill each other largely because they have a social contract not to do so, whereas animals cannot be party to such a contract. Porphyry returns to this argument too in Book III. Claudius of Naples is introduced as the representative of the common man (I.13), although his arguments are philosophically no less sophisticated than those of Heraclides or Hermarchus. Claudius had claimed that the killing and eating of animals is customary, good for health, and religiously demanded. The elaboration of these arguments and their refutation takes much of the rest of the first Book and a good deal of Books II and III.

Suppose, says Claudius, one were to listen to the vegetarian arguments: Wouldn't animals propagate beyond measure? Where would they get their food? And when the animals die of starvation, they will rot and spread disease everywhere, “for the seas and rivers and ponds will be full of fishes, the air with birds, the earth with all sorts of reptiles” (I.16). Moreover, if we were to abstain from animals,

“our fields would be destroyed by wild animals, since the whole earth would be occupied by birds and snakes so that it would be difficult to plough, and the sown seeds would be immediately gathered by the birds, and any fruit which ripened would be eaten by four-footed animals”

(I.24).

Anyone who is acquainted with hunters will know these arguments well; the more subtle version is that we must hunt deer because if we do not, they will all be sick in the winter and many will die of starvation. If we had not killed the wolves, the weak would have been slaughtered naturally. But, as we have interfered in the natural process by eliminating wolves, we must play the ecological role of the carnivore. In fact, the argument of Claudius is an eloquent expression of the viewpoint that man must be responsible for maintaining the integrity of the ecological system. We, like all other animals, are in a necessary competition with other species for our survival: “we are naturally and rightly at war with the animals.” (ἀλλὰ μὴν πϱόs γε τὰ θηϱία πόλεμοs ἡμῖν ἔμφυτοs ἅμα χαὶ δίχαιοs: I.14). In order to stay ahead in the competition we kill those animals which represent the most danger to us—wolves, lions, poisonous serpents (I.14). But those are the animals which also kill other species; so our natural self-defense requires us to maintain the balance of nature among other species as well. I imagine that Aristotle must have had something of this sort in mind when he commented, rather incidentally, “if nature makes nothing in vain, she has made all the animals for the sake of man. And so the art of war … includes hunting, which we ought to practice against wild beasts …” (Pol. I.8, 1256b20).⁹

Porphyry's response to the “environmental management” position is two-fold: in the first place, “If animals were allowed to govern themselves, many would quickly perish, destroyed by others who would attack them and diminish their number, as is found to be the case with myriads of animals on which men do not feed” (I.53). In other words, Porphyry tells us to have confidence that the balance of nature would operate perfectly well without our intervention, as it obviously does in all those regions in which man does not interfere. In the second place, “it does not follow that because animals are slain that it is necessary to eat them … For the laws permit us to defend ourselves against enemies who attack us, but it did not seem proper to those laws to grant that we should eat them, as being a thing contrary to the nature of man” (II.1).

To understand the second argument, we should observe that the animals against which we defend ourselves prominently include large carnivores like lions and tigers, or poisonous snakes, or such animals which threaten to consume our vegetable food supply as rats and mice, for example. We do not normally eat these or any of the other animals we kill out of self-defense. We do, furthermore, defend ourselves against other human beings, but the fact that we are permitted to kill those who attempt to kill us in no way gives us license for cannibalism. Porphyry thinks that the human race is generally more vicious both to other species and to other cospecifics than are other animals. For example, he remarks (in III.12) that the war between the species for food results in animal attacks upon man which would not occur were food more abundant; that human beings under pressure of war and famine become even more savage than wild beasts, for they “do not abstain from eating each other” (which supposes that animals do not normally eat other members of their own species).

Porphyry correctly points out that the animals which are used for food are, in the great majority of cases, precisely those animals against which we do not have to defend ourselves at all (cf. III.20): we raise cattle simply to eat them, and were we not to cultivate their increase, they would not become pests (not even in India). Perhaps under very special conditions deer or rabbits might threaten our vegetable diet but, if our eating of meat were limited only to those animals which had become threats to our agriculture, we would certainly eat very little meat indeed! The self-defense argument could never be used to support the practice of raising animals in order to eat them, nor even to support the practice of managing the ecological system in order to maximize the number of members of wild species which we particularly wish to hunt for food. Indeed the practice of wild-life management leads us back to Porphyry's first argument, that the wild environment is quite capable of managing itself, provided that man leaves it alone. (One might call Porphyry's position “Laissez-faire environmentalism.”)

Although Porphyry does not try to make much of the connection in this place, his ecological position could be shown to owe its starting point to the general Neoplatonistic theory that the world is governed by Providence in general for the better, and that there is no need for the intervention of human will. The Stoic notion of πϱόνοια tends to turn on the idea that things are very well arranged for the benefit of human beings,¹⁰ as Porphyry notes:

The assertion of Chrysippus is considered by our opponents very probable, that the Gods made us for the sake of themselves, and that they made animals for our sake; horses to assist us in battle, dogs that they might hunt with us, and leopards, bears, and lions for the sake of exercising our fortitude.

(III.20)

In contrast, the Neoplatonists tend to see man as a part of nature, and not necessarily the most significant part—we understand other species better if we take them as existing for themselves rather than for us. Even Aristotle rarely has recourse to external teleology¹¹ in his biological books (the comment in the Politics already noted is quite exceptional for him);¹² the only clear example is the placement of the shark's mouth which is said to benefit the shark's prey more than the shark (PA IV.13, 696b29), and that example is immediately amended by reference to the benefit to the shark itself of this arrangement.

One may, in fact, find some evidence of a commitment to providential ecology even in Proclus, although he is a philosopher not notably interested in biological details. In his Ten Problems on Providence,¹³ Proclus argues that one may find evidence of the workings of Providence in the interrelationships of the various species of animals, whether we understand animals as self-movers or as determined by the larger processes of nature. Proclus interprets the struggle for survival as a working out of the demands of justice, and so indicates that he thinks of animal ecology as exhibiting both the workings of providence and the effects of animal rationality. Thus, he would be in agreement with Porphyry on these two points.

ANIMALS ARE RATIONAL

Porphyry's objective in Book III is to show that animals have λόγοs, in every sense of that most ambiguous word. In particular, he argues that animals have external λόγοs because they have the power of speech, can communicate with each other and with us, understand human speech, and engage in instruction with their young. He argues that they have internal λόγοs because their behavior is rationally ordered. If animals are rational, then we are morally required to treat them as moral entities, to deal with them according to principles of justice.

Porphyry collects a good many examples in defense of his thesis that animals have the gift of speech or communication by means of an external λόγοs: animals obviously communicate with each other, and several people have gained fame by learning to understand the language of birds and of other animals.¹⁴ He tells us that he himself raised a tame partridge which responded to the sound of his voice with corresponding sounds of its own and not with the usual partridge sounds (III.4, end). Even some voiceless animals respond very accurately to the commands given them by their human masters, indicating an understanding of speech. In this context Porphyry recounts the story of the pet eel of the Roman Crassus, which came when its master called; Crassus was so attached to this eel that he was overcome by emotion at its death, although he had borne the death of his three children with equanimity.¹⁵ Giving credit to Aristotle, he cites examples of animals which instruct their young not only concerning behavior, as mother cats instruct their young to hunt, but also concerning proper sounds to make for communication, as various birds habitually do.¹⁶

Porphyry needs to make the argument that animals have the gift of speech, because he is ultimately arguing against Aristotle's statement in the Politics (I.2, 1253a7ff), that

man is the only animal endowed by nature with the gift of speech; whereas mere voice is but an indication of pleasure or pain, and is therefore found in other animals (for their nature attains to the perception of pleasure and pain and the intimation of them to one another, and no further), the power of speech is intended to set forth the expedient and the inexpedient and therefore likewise the just and the unjust.¹⁷

Porphyry gives at least three arguments intended to demonstrate that animals also have internal λόγοs: first, animals appear to behave rationally; the capacity to find one's way through a maze, or in general to avoid obstacles in achieving one's goals, requires syllogistic reasoning, and is clearly an application of λόγοs. Second, animals and men are physiologically similar, but if so, then their capacities must be similar; that is, our sense organs and instrumental parts are essentially similar; our sense organs and other organic parts operate according to our “internal reason;” consequently, the senses and other organs of other species must also operate according to their internal reason. Pointing out the sharp vision of eagles and keen sense of smell of dogs, Porphyry quotes Aristotle against himself in this connection: “Aristotle says that animals whose sensitive faculties are more exquisite are more prudent (φϱονιμώτεϱα) (III.8),” but if more prudent then more rational.

Third, Porphyry appeals to the innate awareness that each species has of its own special capacities. “The panther uses its teeth, the lion its nails and teeth, the horse its hooves, the ox its horns, the cock its spurs, and the scorpion its sting” (III.9). But that innate awareness of one's own capacity is already a form of rationality, Porphyry claims. Anyone who thinks that this awareness is “natural” but not “rational” is “ignorant” (III.10). The “ignorant” are those who explain away this sort of evidence of animal rationality by appealing to an innate “nature,” or instinct. The Stoics are the most typical “instinct” theorists, since they believed in a “first impulse” which brings about all sorts of natural effects which may seem rational to us, since we use the standard of human behavior.¹⁸ Even Galen, generally a Platonist against the Stoics, uses the example of innate awareness of capacities as evidence that other species operate by instinct rather than by reason:

Every animal has, untaught, a perception of the faculties of its own soul and the superiority resident in its parts. Or why else, when it is possible for the small boar to bite with his little teeth, does he not use them for battle instead of trying to use the tusks which he does not yet have? … So it seems to me that the other animals acquire their skills by instinct rather than by reason, bees building their hive, ants working at their treasuries and labyrinths, and spiders spinning and weaving.¹⁹

From Porphyry's point of view, all of these are examples of innate reason, rather than of instinct or of sub-rational nature.

A radical distinction between rational animals (men) and instinctive or natural animals (all the others) fits into the general Aristotelian and Stoic view of the order of the universe, that animals were made for the use of man. Chrysippus stated this point of view most succinctly in his notorious witticism, that the soul of the pig has the function of keeping its meat fresh for us until we are ready to eat it, and is more effective than salt for that purpose. Obviously Porphyry thinks that this is outrageous,²⁰ nor would Galen have accepted the external teleology upon which the joke depends, judging from the De usu partium.²¹

We might point out in this connection that modern physiology, psychology, and physical anthropology proceed on the assumption that there are no radical distinctions between human and animal capacities for learning and adaptation. The socalled “new science” of sociobiology has gone to great lengths to diminish our sense that human behavior is different in kind from animal behavior. But the sociobiologist tends to reduce human reason to animal instinct, while Porphyry, with as much justice, elevates animal behavior to rationality.

Within the Neoplatonic system it is practically impossible to make any distinction between “instinct” and “reason,” since all orderings of behavior are ipso facto examples of internal λόγοs. Instinct, ὁϱμή, is limited by Porphyry to the driving forces of pleasure and pain:

There are two fountains whose streams irrigate the bond by which the soul is bound to the body; and from which the soul being filled as with deadly potions, becomes oblivious of the proper objects of her contemplation. These fountains are pleasure and pain. … As much as possible we must separate ourselves from these.²²

If the Neoplatonist accepts only the principles of pleasure and pain as belonging to the “first impulse,” then all other principles of action are, as ordered and ordering, rational.²³

Porphyry takes animals as having ethical virtues and vices; if animals have moral virtues—justice, kindness, fidelity—they must also be rational. (If you're counting, this is approximately his fourth argument in defense of the thesis that animals are rational.) Porphyry needs to argue this point in order to meet Aristotle's position in Politics I.2 head-on, since Aristotle argued that only men are “political animals” because only men can behave in accordance with “a sense of good and evil, of justice and injustice.” Porphyry's first examples of animals which are just are the bees and ants, beloved of many ancient authors²⁴ and of E. O. Wilson; Porphyry also says that storks are just toward their parents (cf. Plato Pol. 263d). Justice is also the quality which makes it possible for animals to associate with man (III.12). The fidelity of dogs toward their masters is often legendary, and the fidelity of some animals toward others of their species is also well known. Even if we interpret the relationship between animals and their keepers as essentially manipulative, animals turn out to be rational:

Many brutes are slaves to men, and (as someone rightly says) though in a state of servitude themselves, through the improbity of men, yet at the same time, by wisdom and justice, they cause their masters to be their servants and curators.

(III.13)

The accuracy of that remark will be recognized by anyone who has been trained by his cat to open the door or refrigerator on cue.

Finally, we should remember that animals have often been generous, helpful, and kind toward man, as we learn from the stories of human beings who were raised by animals and from the stories of people who have been saved from death by the intervention of non-obligated animals.

Another argument, very powerful, is that animals are subject to madness, through rabies and other diseases; but madness is a derangement of the rational faculty, so animals must have a rational faculty. If they were not rational to begin with, they could not become mad (III.7, 24).²⁵ This argument appears to be relied upon by physiological psychologists even today,²⁶ since research concerning the chemical basis of various derangements of the rational faculty is done using animal subjects. That would not make sense if the derangements were only analogically similar and not homologous.

The fact that animals can be taught to behave as we like indicates that they are rational; even his opponents, Porphyry says, punish animals when they do wrong “in order to make them better, producing in them, through the pain, a sorrow which we denominate repentance” (III.22). If we can study learning from the behavior of animals, are they not rational, and if they can learn behavior which when engaged in by human beings we call “moral” behavior, are they not moral creatures? But if animals are rational, moral creatures, then they must belong to the community of such creatures and deserve moral respect.

These few indications from De abst. [De Abstinentia] III begin to show the range of evidence upon which Porphyry draws. He has done only a little independent observation of nature, but he has read several works of the Platonic school, and borrows much from Plutarch; he perhaps knew something Pythagorean as well; he refers to Aristotle and paraphrases at length an otherwise lost work of Theophrastus;²⁷ he has not neglected the Stoics, citing Chrysippus as if he had read him. His argument that animals participate in reason is based not so much on a priori arguments as on observations of the behavior of various species; while those observations have led sociobiologists to argue that human behavior is consequently like that of animals, they lead Neoplatonists like Porphyry to believe that animal behavior is derived from that which is higher than themselves, that animals participate (defectively) in the reason which belongs ultimately to the soul of the world.

It can, I think, be shown that the argument for vegetarianism presented in Porphyry's De abstinentia is a reasonable continuation from the foundations established by Plotinus. According to the Plotinian synthesis, all nature is akin, interrelated, but we find closer relationships and more distant relationships as the branches of the tree stem from the same or other intermediate ἀϱχαί.

Porphyry's argument that animals have an internal λόγοs may remind us also of the Plotinian notion, borrowed from the Stoics,²⁸ of pervasive λόγοι σπεϱματιχοί which enform everything which exists. But Porphyry avoids reliance on a metaphysical theory which would prove entirely too much. He wants to demonstrate that animals are considerably more similar to us than plants are, but both plants and animals share in λόγοι σπεϱματιχοί. Consideration of the unity of all nature might lead us to develop a “slippery slope” argument against Porphyry: if we are morally permitted to eat vegetable products, then why not those animals which are, according to Aristotle, essentially indistinguishable from plants (cf. HA VIII.1)? But if those, what about other “bloodless” animals? And where will we draw the line? Between “blooded” and “bloodless”, i.e. between the vertebrates and the rest? On what basis?

We may, in conclusion, notice that contemporary philosophers, like Peter Singer, have rediscovered arguments like those which I have summarized from Porphyry's treatise.²⁹ Porphyry anticipates Singer and others also in those arguments, not discussed here, based on the comparative nutritional consequences of a vegetarian diet as opposed to a diet including large quantities of meat. This dietary argument continues to interest medical researchers and nutritionists, as well as those who believe that they will think more effectively if they have a purer digestive tract. The Neoplatonistic argument for vegetarianism is not simply a reasonable consequence of the general philosophical position, but it leads toward a re-examination of our presuppositions concerning our place in the world, our physical well-being, and our moral status in relation to the other parts of our ecosystem.

Love of the natural world, in all its complexities and variations, is a powerful motivation toward the investigation of living things, toward a biological science. Plotinus laid the basis for that love, without engaging in the scientific investigations; Porphyry expressed his love of nature in his call to his friend Castricius Firmus, to whom the De abstinentia is addressed, to join him in a vegetarian way of life. In that call he relies upon the biological investigations of others, and contributes to the elaboration of several arguments which may shape subsequent scientific investigations of living things.³⁰

Notes

1. This paper was presented to the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, meeting with the Eighth International Conference on Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies, at Villanova University, September 24, 1983. It is a sequel to my “Animals and Men in the Peripatetic School,” in Ancient and Medieval Epistemology, edited by Parvis Morewedge, forthcoming at Eidos Press, and my “Plotinus and Biology,” forthcoming in Neoplatonism and Science, edited by R. Baine Harris, but it does not assume acquaintance with either paper.

2. For references, see my “Plotinus and Biology,”.

3. See P. De Lacy, “Galen's Platonism” American Journal of Philology 93 (1972) 27-39; Galen, On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato (P. De Lacy, ed., tr., comm. [Berlin; Akademie-Verlag, 1978]); W. D. Smith, The Hippocratic Tradition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979) 86-96.

4. Albinus is edited by Louis in the Budé series; John Dillon, The Middle Platonists (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977) takes note of this feature of the Epitome, and also examines the interest of Apuleius in biological matters (pp. 315ff). Dillon compares the treatment by Albinus and Apuleius of the biomedical passages in the Timaeus (pp. 326-328), suggesting that Apuleius not only read the Tim. carefully but also that he knew (or his source knew) Aristotle's biological work as well.

5. This impression is supported by J. Charrue, Plotin Lecteur de Platon (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1978).

6. Text: Porphyry, Opuscula Selecta (A. Nauck, ed. [Leipzig: Teubner, 1886; reprint Olms, 1963)] 83-270. Translation: Porphyry, On Abstinence from Animal Food (Thomas Taylor, tr., Esme Wynne-Tyson, ed. and intro.) [London: Centaur, 1965)].

7. Porphyry was born in 232/3 A.D. and died before 305, so the book was written in the second half of the third century A.D. See Andrew Smith, Porphyry's Place in the Neoplatonic Tradition (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974) xi; Edward Warren, Porphyry the Phoenician, Isagoge (Toronto: Pontifical Institute, 1975) 9.

8. Porphyry does not discuss, perhaps because he does not know it, the argument that an omnivorous diet is demonstrably appropriate for man because an examination of human dentition shows that our teeth are suited not only for a vegetable diet but also for eating meat. The passages in Aristotle which one might think of in connection with the question do not actually say that man is omnivorous, but contrast the saw-toothed carnivorous animals with man, and compare the functions of teeth in defense, eating, and speech (Phys. II.8, 198b23; HA II.1, 501a8-5, 502a3; PA III.1, 661a34-662b23; GA V.8, 788b3-789b23). The attacks on Democritus which one finds particularly in the Phys. and GA passages are taken up again by Galen in De usu partium XI.8-9, who does not discuss the human omnivorous diet. An anonymous reviewer for this Journal finds the argument present in J.-J. Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality, note (e).

9. Dennis Schmidt suggests calling the position of Claudius “Baconian environmentalism,” since Francis Bacon would presumably care about the environment and would hold that we must express that care through the mastery and management of nature.

10. Cf. SVF II. #1152-1167.

11. “External teleology” in this context means the explanation of characteristics of living things on the ground of the advantage of those characteristics to species other than their possessors. The characteristics of horses which make them useful for transportation and the characteristics of pigs which make them useful for food are not the ground of the understanding of those characteristics for Aristotle, but they are for Chrysippus.

12. One may also recall Meta. XII.10, 1074b16: “All things are ordered together somehow … they are interconnected. All are ordered together to one end.” This passage is not really an expression of external teleology, since it takes species as parts of a whole which itself has an end; the Neoplatonists are most sympathetic with this viewpoint, and unsympathetic with the Stoic theory. See also A. Preus, Science and Philosophy in Aristotle's Biological Works (Hildesheim: Olms, 1975) 238-240.

13. Dix Problèmes Concernant la Providence, ed. and trans. from the Latin version of William of Moerbeke by D. Isaac, (Paris: Budé, 1977).

14. Plato suggests, in a mythological context, a possibility of animal communication, Pol. 272b: the “nurselings of Cronus” were able to converse with animals, but failed to “learn from each tribe the distinctive truth not available to the rest which it could bring as its contribution to swell the common treasure store of wisdom.”

15. Porphyry does not footnote, but the same story is told by Plutarch, Util. inimic. 89a, and by several other authors. See A. M. Ward, “Crassus' Slippery Eel” Classical Review 24 (1974) 185-6.

16. III.6 et al., with many examples drawn ultimately from Aristotle HA IX, largely via Plutarch, The Cleverness of Animals.

17. Gerard Verbeke pointed out, in response to an earlier version of this paper, that Aristotle distinguishes, in Pol. I.2, between the activity of sημαίνειν, which animals can do, and δηλοῦν, restricted to men.

18. Cf. SVF II.#714ff. Animals are moved by ὁϱμή and φανταsία and only man has δύναμιs λογιaή.

19. Galen, De usu partium I.3: cf. M. T. May, trans. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1968) 69-70.

20. Porphyry De abst. III.20; Cicero did not think much of the joke either: De fin. V.38, cf. SVF II.#723 and Nat. deor. III.64, 160.

21. See Galen, De usu part. 11.14 (pp. 530ff, in the May trans.), whether the God of Moses(!) is represented as considering the benefit to the individual of the placement of eyelashes and eyebrows. See also Book 17, the epode, in which the defense of teleology is clearly of internal teleology; in fact, the “internal intelligence” described in pp. 729-730 (May) seems a close approach to the sort of thing we expect from Plotinus and Porphyry, rather than from Chrysippus or Zeno, as May hints in a note.

22. De abst. I.33, drawing on Plato, Phaedo 60b, and especially Philebus 35 d ff, which relates the concept of ὁϱμή directly to pleasure and pain.

23. Aristotle, Pol. I.2, accepts the limitation of animal motivation to the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain. To argue against Aristotle, it is chiefly necessary to show that animals have additional conceptual motivations.

24. Even Aristotle, in Pol. I.2, says only that men are more political than the bees and ants.

25. Porphyry gives Plutarch credit for the argument, III.24, and in fact he so closely follows Plutarch's De sollertia animalium in III.20-24, that we can use Plutarch's text to edit Porphyry and vice versa.

26. E.g., S. E. Lucas & R. R. Griffiths, “Precipitated Withdrawal by a Benzodiazepine Antagonist (Ro 15-1788) after 7 Days of Diazepam” Science 217.17 (17 Sept. 1982) 1161-1163. The article assumes that behavioral reactions to drugs shown by baboons are likely to be of the same sort as those shown by human patients. Valium withdrawal makes the baboons depressed. Similar articles may be found relying on experiments with dogs, cats, and rodents.

27. For discussion of that and related passages in the De abst., see my “Animals and Men in the Peripatetic School.”

28. Cf. Diogenes Laertius, VII. 135.

29. Cf. Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (New York: New York Review, 1975); T. Regan & P. Singer, eds. Animal Rights and Human Obligations (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1976). For a sense of the motivations of vegetarians both ancient and modern, see D. Stewart, “The Limits of Trooghaft” Encounter (Feb. 1972: repr. Regan & Singer, pp. 238-245).

30. The research upon which this paper is based has been supported by grants from NSF, NEH, and SUNY Foundation.