The Merchant and the Lion
31 July, 1998
From: Fable of the Bees
A Roman merchant in one of the Carthaginian wars was cast away upon the coast of Africa; himself and his slave with great difficulty got safe ashore; but going in quest of relief were met by a lion of mighty size. It happened to be one of the breed that ranged in Aesop's days, and one that could not only speak several languages, but seemed, moreover, very well acquainted with human affairs.
The slave got upon a tree, but his master not thinking himself safe there and having heard much of the generosity of lions, fell down prostrate before him with all the signs of fear and submission. The lion who had lately filled his belly, bids him rise and for a while lay by his fears, assuring him withal that he should not be touched if he could give him any tolerable reasons why he should not be devoured.
The merchant obeyed; and having now received some glimmering hopes of safety, gave a dismal account of the shipwreck he had suffered, and endeavoring from thence to raise the lion's pity, pleaded his cause with abundance of good rhetoric; but observing by the countenance of the beast that flattery and fine words made very little impression, he betook himself to arguments of greater solidity, and reasoning from the excellency of man's nature and abilities, remonstrated how improbable it was that the gods should not have designed him for a better use than to be eat by savage beasts. Upon this the lion became more attentive and vouchsafed now and then a reply, till at last the following dialogue ensued between them.
Oh vain and covetous animal (said the lion), whose pride and avarice can make him leave his native soil, where his natural wants might be plentifully supplied, and try rough seas and dangerous mountains to find out superfluities, why should you esteem your species above ours? And if the gods have given you a superiority over all creatures, then why beg you of an inferior?
Our superiority (answered the merchant) consists not in bodily force, but strength of understanding; the gods have endued us with a rational soul, which, though invisible, is much the better part of us.
[The lion]: I desire to touch
nothing of you but what is good to eat; but why do you value yourself so much upon that
part which is invisible?
[The merchant]: Because it
is immortal, and shall meet with rewards after death for the actions of this life, and the
just shall enjoy eternal bliss and tranquillity with the heroes and demi-gods in the
Elysian fields.
[The lion]: What life have you led?
[The merchant]: I have honoured the gods, and studied to be beneficial to man.
[The lion]: Then why do you fear death if you think the gods as just as you have been?
[The merchant]: I have a wife and five small children that must come to want if they lose me.
[The lion]: I have two whelps that are not big enough to shift for themselves and are in want now and must actually be starved if I can provide nothing for them. Your children will be provided for one way or another; at least as well when I have eat you, as if you had been drowned.
As to the excellency of either species, the value of things among you has ever increased with the scarcity of them, and to a million of men there is hardly one lion; besides that, in the great veneration man pretends to have for his kind, there is little sincerity farther than it concerns the share which everyone's pride has in it for himself; it is a folly to boast of the tenderness shown and attendance given to your young ones, or the excessive and lasting trouble bestowed in the education of them.
Man being born the most necessitous and most helpless animal, this is only an instinct of nature, which, in all creatures, has ever proportioned the care of the parents to the wants and imbecilities of the offspring. But if a man had a real value for his kind, how is it possible that often ten thousand of them, and sometimes ten times as many, should be destroyed in few hours for the caprice of two?
All degrees of men despise
those that are inferior to them; and if you could enter into the hearts of kings and
princes, you would hardly find any but what have less value for the greatest part of the
multitudes they rule over than those have for the cattle that belong to them. Why should
so many pretend to derive their race, though but spuriously, from the immortal gods; why
should all of them suffer others to kneel down before them and more or less take delight
in having divine honours paid to them, but to insinuate that themselves are of a more
exalted nature and a species superior to that of their subjects?
[The lion continued]:
Savage I am, but no creature can be called cruel but what either by malice or
insensibility extinguishes his natural pity. The lion was born without compassion; we
follow the instinct of our nature; the gods have appointed us to live upon the waste and
spoil of other animals, and as long as we can meet with dead ones, we never hunt after the
living.
It is only man, mischievous man, that can make death a sport. Nature taught your stomach to crave nothing but vegetables; but your violent fondness to change and great eagerness after novelties have prompted you to the destruction of animals without justice or necessity, perverted your nature, and warped your appetites which way soever your pride or luxury have called them.
The lion has a ferment within him that consumes the toughest skin and hardest bones, as well as the flesh of all animals without exception; your squeamish stomach, in which the digestive heat is weak and inconsiderable, will not so much as admit of the most tender parts of them, unless above half the concoction has been performed by artificial fire before hand; and yet what animal have you spared to satisfy the caprices of a languid appetite? Languid I say; for what is man's hunger compared to the lion's? Yours, when it is at the worst, makes you faint; mine makes me mad. Oft have I tried with roots and herbs to allay the violence of it, but in vain; nothing but large quantities of flesh can anywise appease it.
Yet the fierceness of our hunger notwithstanding, lions have often requited benefits received; but ungrateful and perfidious man feeds on the sheep that clothes him and spares not her innocent young ones, whom he has taken into his care and custody. If you tell me the gods made man master over all other creatures, what tyranny was it then to destroy them out of wantonness? No, fickle, timorous animal, the gods have made you for society and designed that millions of you, when well joined together, should compose the strong Leviathan. A single lion bears some sway in the creation, but what is a single man? A small and inconsiderable part, a trifling atom of one great beast. What nature designs, she executes; and it is not safe to judge of what she supposed but from the effects she shows. If she had intended that man, as man from a superiority of species, should lord it over all other animals, the tiger, nay, the whale and eagle, would have obeyed his voice.
But if your wit and understanding exceeds ours, ought not the lion, in deference to that superiority, to follow the maxims of men, with whom nothing is more sacred than that the reason of the strongest is ever the most prevalent? Whole multitudes of you have conspired and compassed the destruction of one, after they had owned the gods had made him their superior; and one has often ruined and cut off whole multitudes, whom, by the same gods, he had sworn to defend and maintain.
[The lion concluded]: Man never acknowledged superiority without power, and why should I? The excellence I boast of is visible, all animals tremble at the sight of the lion, not out of panic fear. The gods have given me swiftness to overtake and strength to conquer whatever comes near me. Where is there a creature that has teeth and claws like mine, behold the thickness of these massive jawbones, consider the width of them, and feel the firmness of this brawny neck. The nimblest deer, the wildest boar, the stoutest horse, and strongest bull are my prey wherever I meet them.
Thus spoke the lion, and the merchant fainted away.
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