We agree that there are some decent and good qualities which are applicable to animals and many other functions which help preserve and maintain their courage; these are observed by sight. There is certainty in everything perceived or discerned in all the various species. But surely animals have no share of reasoning ability, for reasoning ability extends itself to a multiplicity of abstract concepts in the mind’s perception of God, the universe, laws, provincial practices, the state, state affairs, and numerous other things, none of which animals understand. (De animalibus, 84–85)7
One of the fundamental texts in the polemic has got to be Plutarch’s De sollertia animalium (On the Intelligence of Animals), which appeared at an unspecified date between 70 and 90 A.D. Plutarch’s position is decidedly anti-Stoical and—like Porphyry’s De abstinentia—is concerned not just with animal intelligence but with the respect we owe animals. Though the original Greek title translates as “Whether Land or Sea Animals Are Cleverer,” and the Latin sollertia is weaker than the Greek phronesis (and tends to suggest a practical intelligence guided by experience), there can be no doubt that Plutarch is endorsing the thesis of animal rationality and polemizing against the doctrines of those who would deny it. Of course animal rationality is imperfect compared with that of humans but—the argument is common throughout the polemic—similar differences also exist among humans. All living beings share sensitivity and imagination and are capable of perception. But we cannot perceive without the participation of reason, because the data perceived may escape our attention unless an intelligent behavior intervenes to highlight and interpret it (what we experience with our eyes and ears does not result in sensations without the involvement of our rational faculties). (This argument is still extremely current in contemporary cognitivism.) If this were not the case, Plutarch argues, it would be impossible to explain why animals not only perceive but also recall their perceptions and deduce from them notions they commit to memory by which to plan actions useful to their survival.8
This is the opening ploy in a polemic aimed ultimately at Aristotle and in general at all those who hold, as do the Stoics, that the behavior of animals is as if it were rational behavior. That would be like saying, argues Plutarch, that it is as if the swallow were to build its nest, as if the lion felt anger, as if deer were timorous—or, worse still, as if animals could see, as if they emitted sounds, as if they were alive.
Different capacities certainly exist, and they exist among animals just as they exist among humans, admits Plutarch, but to say that some beings have weaker rational faculties than others does not mean that they don’t have them at all: “Let us rather say that they possess an infirm and murky intellect, like an eye afflicted with feeble and blurred vision.” He is no doubt referring to the Academicians when he affirms that animals have a share in reason because their behavior proves that they have intentions, preparation, memory, emotions, care for their offspring, gratitude for benefits received, resentment toward those who have caused them suffering, courage, sociability, temperance, and magnanimity.
There follows a plethora of examples drawn from the observation of animal behavior and finally (969 B) Chrysippus’s argument appears. Indeed, it is preceded by the example of the fox, used by some peoples to test the solidity of the ice: the fox edges slowly forward with its ear cocked listening for the flow of the current beneath the surface of the ice and, if it hears it, concludes that it has reached a layer of thin ice and stops. Chrysippus’s dog behaves in the same way.
True, at this point Plutarch tries to attenuate the force of the proof: it is perception itself, through the scent left by its quarry, that guides the dog, not a syllogism. But the undermining of Chrysippus’s argument does not impugn his final conclusion: we must oppose those who would deny reason and intelligence to animals.
In another dialogue, Bruta animalia ratione uti (“Beasts are Rational”), to those who object that it is an exaggeration to attribute reason to beings without an innate notion of the divinity, Plutarch replies by recalling the atheism of Sisyphus. Hence his rejection of a carnivorous diet, and his concession—though through gritted teeth—that we may put down noxious animals.
In his De natura animalium (On the Nature of Animals) Claudius Aelian (third century A.D.), setting aside the examples of dogs who have fallen in love with human beings (I, 6), speaks in VI, 9, of how dogs are capable of taking care of domestic tasks, so that it is enough for a poor man to have a dog who can take the place of a servant; in VI, 26, we have a series of anecdotes probably taken from Pliny—examples of dogs who laid down and died next to the bodies of their masters, of King Lysimachus’s dog who insisted on sharing the fate of death along with his master even though he could have escaped, a theme that returns in VII, 10, where we hear of dogs who identified with their barking the assassins of their masters, while in VIII, 2, the virtues and feats of hunting dogs are remembered. Aelian picks up on Chrysippus’s argument:
If even animals know how to reason deductively, understand dialectic, and how to choose one thing in preference to another, we shall be justified in asserting that in all subjects Nature is an instructress without a rival. For example, this was told me by one who had some experience in dialectic and was to some degree a devotee of the chase. There was a Hound, he said, trained to hunt; and so it was on the track of a hare. And the hare was not yet to be seen, but the Hound pursuing came upon a ditch and was puzzled as to whether it had better follow to the left or to the right. And when it seemed to have weighed the matter sufficiently, it leapt straight across.
So the man who professed himself both dialectician and huntsman essayed to offer the proof of his statements in the following manner: The Hound paused and reflected and said to itself: “The hare turned either in this direction or in that or went ahead. It turned neither in this direction nor in that; therefore it went ahead.” And in my opinion he was not being sophistical, for as no tracks were visible on the near side of the ditch, it remained that the hare must have jumped over the ditch. So the Hound was quite right also to jump over after it, for certainty that this particular Hound was good at tracking and keen-scented.9
The facts that Aelian’s source is clearly Philo (seeing that he speaks of a ditch instead of a crossroads), and that he is well known for upholding the Stoical position, prevent him from drawing a positive conclusion from the example in favor of the canine logos, and lead him to prudently attribute the wisdom of the dog’s choice not to a chain of reasoning but to a natural instinct.
It seems to me that posterity took up the argument more in Sextus’s sense that in Philo’s. The third book of the De abstinentia of Porphyry (third–fourth century A.D.) is attuned to the anti-Stoical polemic. The arguments offered in favor of animal intelligence serve to back up a “vegetarian” thesis against their slaughter. Animals express their interior states, and the fact that we do not understand them is no more embarrassing than that we do not understand the language or thought of the Indians or the Scythians (and there are individuals and peoples who claim to comprehend the language of animals, as is proven by Philostratus, in his Life of Apollonius of Tyana, for whom the Arabs understand the language of the birds). As a consequence, we cannot define animals as being without reason simply because we do not understand them. Nor is it a convincing argument to say that only certain animals like ravens and magpies can imitate human language, because not only can humans not imitate the languages of the animals, they cannot even understand all five (sic) human languages.
There follow the usual references to the various animal abilities and to how the dog interacts intelligently and communicates with his master; we then proceed to the citation of Chrysippus’s argument (III, 6, 1), recalling that, according to Empedocles, Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, the dog participates in discourse (III, 6, 6) and that the difference between internal discourse and external discourse for Aristotle is merely a difference between more and less. This is not all: animals are able to teach their young, the male shares sympathetically the birth pangs of the female, they display an acute sense of justice and sociability, they have sharper senses than ours, and if at times their reasonableness seems inferior to ours this does not mean that it is to be denied:
Let it be
