Chap. I.] OF MAN. 119 



mated beings ?" And then, the diseases to which he is subject, 

 the numerous remedies which lie is obliged to devise against 

 his maladies, and those thwarted every now and then by new 

 forms and features of disease. 12 While other animals have 

 an instinctive knowledge of their natural powers; some, of 

 their swiftness of pace, some of their rapidity of flight, and 

 some again of their power of swimming ; man is the only one 

 that knows nothing, that can learn nothing without being- 

 taught; he can neither speak, nor walk, nor eat, 13 and, in 

 short, he can do nothing, at the prompting of nature only, but 

 weep. For this it is, that many have been of opinion, that it 

 were better not to have been born, or if born, to have been anni- 

 hilated 14 at the earliest possible moment. 



To man alone ; of all animated beings, has it been given, to 

 gricvft/MQ. him nlonc to bo guilty of luxury and excess : and 

 that in modes innumerable, and in every part of his body. 

 Man is the only being that is a prey to ambition, to avarice, to 



11 He alludes to the gradual induration of the bones of the head which 

 takes place in the young of the human species, and imparts strength to it. 

 Aristotle, in his Hist. Anim., states the general opinion of the ancients, 

 that this takes place with the young of no other class of animated beings. 



12 There is little doubt that new forms and features of disease are con- 

 tinually making their appearance among mankind, and even the same 

 peoples, and have been from the earliest period ; it was so at Rome, in the 

 days of the Republic and of the Emperors. It is not improhable that these 

 new forms of disease depend greatly upon changes in the temperature and 

 diet. The plagues of 1348, 1666, and the Asiatic cholera of the present 

 day, are not improbably various features of what may be radically the same 

 disease. At the first period the beverage of the English was beer, or 

 rather sweet- wort, as the hop does not appear to have been used till a 

 later period. At the present day, tea and coffee, supported by ardent 

 spirits, form the almost universal beverage. 



13 Pliny forgets, however, that infants do not require to be taught how 

 to suck. 



14 According to Cicero, this opinion was more particularly expressed by 

 Silenus and Euripides. Seneca also, in his Consolation to Marcia, ex- 

 presses a very similar opinion. It w r as a very common saying, that " Those 

 whom the gods love, die young." It will be observed that Pliny here 

 uses the significant word " aboleri," implying utter annihilation after 

 death. It will be seen towards the end of this Book, that he laug.hed to 

 scorn the notion of the immortality of the soul. 



15 By the use of the word "luctus" he may probably mean "tears;" 

 but there is little doubt that all animals have their full share of sorrows, 

 brought upon them either by the tyranny and cruelty of man, or their own 

 unrestrained passions. 



