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Raphael, School of Athens (detail) |
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.)Aristotle wrote a number of treatises about the animal kingdom -- On the Parts of Animals; On the Movement of Animals; On the Progression of Animals; On the Generation of Animals and the History of the Animals, -- much of which is available in English online at the MIT Classics Internet Archive. While Aristotle often endeavoured to refute what he considered to be popular superstition about the animals, he still reflects the same general cultural attitudes towards the various species that are reflected in the popular legends as well: the fox is "crafty and mischievous" while the elephant is "easy-tempered," as he writes in Book I of the History of Animals. Yet while Aristotle admits that the animals have characteristic behaviors and even a kind of intelligence, he denies emphatically that they have the logos, or ability to reason, which is exhibited by human beings. For Aristotle, the animals are "a-loga zoia," "animals without logos", which can be translated as "dumb animals," both in the sense that animals lack reason and also that they lack speech (Greek logos refers both to reason and to speech; compare the Greek root log- and the Latin root loq-).
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