Plut. Mor., Brute Beasts Use Reason 10 — That brute beasts make use of reason

Plut. Mor., Brute Beasts Use Reason 10 — That brute beasts make use of reason, Plutarch; served verbatim

ULYSSES. What then, Gryllus? Does your transmutation inform ye also that sheep and asses are rational creatures? GRYLLUS. From these very creatures, most worthy and best of men, Ulysses, the nature of beasts is chiefly to be discerned to be as it is, neither void of reason nor understanding. For as one tree is neither more or less than another without a soul, but all are together in the same condition of insensibility (for there is no tree that is endued with a soul); so neither would one animal seem to be more slow to understand or more indocible than another, if all did not partake of reason and understanding, though some in a less, some in a greater measure. For you must consider that the stupidity and slothfulness of some is an argument of the quickness and subtlety of others, which easily appears when you compare a fox, a wolf, or a bee with a sheep or ass; as if thou shouldest compare thyself to Polyphemus, or thy grandfather Autolycus with the Corinthian [mentioned in] Homer. For I do not believe there is such difference between beast and beast, in point of reason and understanding and memory, as between man and man. ULYSSES. Have a care, Gryllus; it is a dangerous thing to allow them reason that have no knowledge of a Deity. GRYLLUS. Must we then deny that thou, most noble Ulysses, being so wise and full of stratagems as thou art, wast begotten by Sisyphus?

The Greek stands ready in the workroom; the English is served. Both faces will read together.

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Filed here — the addresses this episode attests; counted by the house’s first pass

Deity — a candidate entry Homer — a life Ulysses — a candidate entry

That brute beasts make use of reason, Plutarch — translated by Sir A. J. (rev. W. W. Goodwin), 1874
Apparatus shelf + pinned Perseus TEI — Plutarch's Morals (the Moralia), ed. William W. Goodwin, five volumes · 'Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by William W. Goodwin, Ph. D.', with an introduction by R. W. Emerson; Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1874 (five volumes; a minority of the TEI transcriptions were keyed from the same publisher's 1878 reprint)
license: public-domain (US: the Goodwin edition is an 1874 Boston publication of a 1684-1694 translation — title pages verified on all five shelf scans at acquisition; Perseus digital editions CC BY-SA 4.0, attribution recorded per ops/corpus-staging/SOURCES.md pattern)