Moral Letters to Lucilius

​Nature produces her offspring, she does not abandon them. And because the most certain protection comes from what is closest, each one is committed to oneself. Therefore, as I said in my earlier letters, even tender animals, just poured forth from their mother’s womb or egg, immediately know what is harmful and avoid deadly things. They even dread the shadow of those flying over them, being vulnerable to birds that live by plunder. No animal comes forth to life without fear of death.

”How,” he says, “can a newborn animal have an understanding of either a salutary or a deadly thing?” First, the question is whether they understand, not how they understand. Moreover, that they have understanding is apparent from this, that they would do nothing more if they did understand. What is the reason why a hen does not flee from a peacock or a goose, but flees from a hawk which is so much smaller and not even known to her? Why should chicks fear a cat but not a dog? It is apparent that there is in them a knowledge of what will harm them, not collected by experience; for before they can gain experience, they guard themselves.

​Next, lest you should think this happens by chance, they neither fear things other than they ought, nor do they ever forget this protection and diligence; their flight from what is destructive is always constant. Furthermore, they do not become more timid by living. From which indeed it is apparent that they do not arrive at this by experience, but by a natural love of their own safety. What experience teaches is slow and variable; whatever nature hands down is both equal for all and immediate.

​If, however, you demand it, shall I tell you how every animal attempts to understand harmful things? It feels that it consists of flesh; therefore, it feels what can cut, burn, or crush flesh, and what animals are armed to do harm; it conceives their appearance as hostile and adversarial. These things are connected with one another; for at the same time, each thing is reconciled to its own safety and seeks what helps, while dreading what will hurt. Impulses toward useful things are natural, and turnings away from contrary things are natural; without any thought to dictate this, without deliberation, whatever nature has commanded takes place.

​Do you not see how great is the subtlety of bees in fashioning their dwellings, how great the harmony from all sides in sharing the labor to be undergone? Do you not see how that web of the spider cannot be changed by any mortal, how great a task it is to arrange the threads, some sent straight in place of a support, others running in a circle from dense to sparse, so that the smaller animals, for whose destruction they are stretched, may be held as if entangled in nets?

​That art is born, not learned. Therefore, no animal is more learned than another. You will see equal webs of spiders, and an equal opening of all angles in honeycombs. Whatever art hands down is uncertain and unequal; what nature distributes comes from equality. Nature has handed down nothing more than the protection of oneself and the skill for it, and therefore they begin both to learn and to live at the same time.

​Nor is it surprising that they are born with that without which they would be born in vain. Nature has conferred this first instrument upon them for survival: reconciliation and love of oneself. They could not be safe unless they wished to be. Nor was this to be of benefit by itself, but without this nothing would have been of benefit. In no animal will you detect a self-depreciation, nor even neglect. To the silent and dumb also, although they may be sluggish in other things, there is skill for living. You will see that those things which are useless to others are not lacking to themselves. Farewell.