EPICTETUS. DISCOURSES. Book i. §6. ¶4.
Wednesday
January 9
WELL then: each of the animals is constituted
either for food, or husbandry, or to produce
milk, and the rest of them for some other like
use; and for these purposes what need is there of
understanding the appearances of things, and being
able to make distinctions concerning them? But
God hath introduced man as a spectator of Himself
and His works; and not only as a spectator,
but an interpreter of them. It is therefore shameful
that man should begin and end where irrational
creatures do. He is indeed rather to begin there,
but to end where nature itself hath fixed our end;
and that is in contemplation and understanding,
and in a scheme of life comformable to nature.
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I disagree with this post in that I do not believe that our fellow creatures are irrational. I believe that they have a society and contemplation just the same as we do but we fail to understand it. We cannot live according to our nature if we constantly deny the nature of Nature that is all around us.
ReplyDeleteYes we should live according to our nature with contemplation and understanding of all living things as part of Nature's cycle that we live in.