Michel de Montaigne refused to become callous despite the continual atrocities in the civil war that was tearing his country apart. “I live in a season when unbelievable examples of [the vice of cruelty] flourish,” he wrote, “ But [this] has by no means broken me in.” Here was a man who, in very bad times, kept his head and his heart.
There is a kind of respect and a duty in man...which link[s] us not merely to the beasts, which have life and feelings, but even to trees and plants.And I like this from the conclusion of What a Plant Knows by Daniel Chamovitz:
A shared genetic past does not negate eons of evolution. While plants and humans maintain parallel abilities to sense and be aware of the physical world, the independent paths of evolution have led to a uniquely human capacity, beyond intelligence, that plants don't have: the ability to care.
So the next time you find yourself on a stroll through a park, take a second to ask yourself: What does the dandelion in the lawn see? What does the grass smell? Touch the swooping branches of a beech, knowing that the tree will remember it was touched. But it won't remember you. You, on the other hand, can remember that particular tree and carry the memory of it with you forever.Elsewhere, Ed Yong considers whether humans will ever photosynthesize like plants.
Presumption is our natural and original malady. The most calamitous and fragile of all creatures is man, and at the same time the proudest. He sees and feels himself placed here in the mire and dung of the world, attached and fixed in the worst, most lifeless, and most corrupt part of the universe, on the meanest floor of the house and the farthest removed from the vault of heaven, with animals of the worst condition of the three [of those that fly, swim, and live on the ground]; and he goes installing himself in his imagination that he makes himself God's equal, that he ascribes to himself divine attributes, that he winnows himself and separates himself from the mass of other creatures, determines the share allowed the animals, his colleagues of faculties and powers as seem good to him. How does he know, by the effort of intelligence, what inwardly and secret moves the animals? By what comparison of them with ourselves does he deduce the stupidity which he attributes to them? When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not making me her pastime more than I make her mine?Jim Broadbent is a surprising but effective voice for a well chosen selection from Montaigne's writing here.
The chameleon takes on the colour of its surroundings but the octopus assumes whatever colour it likes to suit the occasion, hiding, say from something fearful or lurking for its prey. The chameleon changes passively, the octopus actively. [sic] We change hue as well, from fear, anger shame and other emotions which affect the colour of our faces. That happens to us, as to the chameleon, passively. Jaundice, not our will, has the power to turn us yellow.And here's James:
Such characteristics in other animals which we realize to surpass our own show they they have, to an outstanding degree, a faculty which we classify as ‘occult’. Similarly, animals probably have many other characteristics and powers which are in no way apparent to us.
...Let an intelligent man imagine human nature created, from the beginning, without sight: let him reflect how much ignorance and confusion such a defect would entail, how much darkness and blindness there would be in our minds. We can see from that how vital it would be for our knowledge of truth if we lacked another sense, or two or three senses. We have fashioned a truth by questioning our five senses working together; but perhaps we need to harmonize the contributions of eight or ten senses if we are ever to know, with certainty, what Truth is in essence. [1]
Take our dogs and ourselves, connected as we are by a tie more intimate than most ties in this world; and yet, outside of that tie of friendly fondness, how insensible, each of us, to all that makes life significant for the other!—we to the rapture of bones under hedges, or smells of trees and lamp-posts, they to the delights of literature and art. As you sit reading the most moving romance you ever fell upon, what sort of a judge is your fox-terrier of your behavior? With all his good will toward you, the nature of your conduct is absolutely excluded from his comprehension. To sit there like a senseless statue, when you might be taking him to walk and throwing sticks for him to catch! What queer disease is this that comes over you every day, of holding things and staring at them like that for hours together, paralyzed of motion and vacant of all conscious life? The African savages came nearer the truth; but they, too, missed it, when they gathered wonderingly round one of our American travellers who, in the interior, had just come into possession of a stray copy of the New York Commercial Advertiser, and was devouring it column by column. When he got through, they offered him a high price for the mysterious object; and, being asked for what they wanted it, they said: "For an eye medicine,"—that being the only reason they could conceive of for the protracted bath which he had given his eyes upon its surface.
...And now what is the result of all these considerations [and others outlined in the longer article]? It is negative in one sense, but positive in another. It absolutely forbids us to be forward in pronouncing on the meaninglessness of forms of existence other than our own; and it commands us to tolerate, respect, and indulge those whom we see harmlessly interested and happy in their own ways, however unintelligible these may be to us. [2]
FootnotesIn Poland that January [1940]
A dog was caught, it had
A cardboard round its soggy neck
With writing on it that said
"Please help us, we are lost.
We can’t find the way anymore
We are fifty-five. This dog will lead
You to where we are
And if you can’t come, drive him away
Don’t shoot at him, he is
The only living creature
Who knows the way to us."
The writing was a child’s
Peasants read it aloud.
That was a year a half ago
The dog hungered and died.
