Chap. 1.] 
OP MATf. 
119 
mated beings And then, the diseases to which he is subject, 
the numerous remedies which he is obliged to devise against 
his maladies, and those thwarted every now and then by new 
forms and features of diseaseJ^ 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,^^ 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^* at the earliest possible moment. 
To man alone, of all animated beings, has it been given, to 
grieve, to him alone to be 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 improbable 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. 
1* 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 was 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 laughed 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. 
