eral
charge against human infirmity that, having different opinions on the
most necessary and important things, we seek in horses and dogs and
birds how to marry and beget and rear children, as though we had no
means of making our own nature known, and appeal to the habits and
instincts of the brute creation, and call them in to bear witness
against the many deviations from nature in our lives, which from the
first are confused and disorderly. For among the brutes nature remains
ever the same, pure and simple, but in men, owing to reason and habit,
like oil in the hands of the perfumers, being mixed up with many added
opinions, it becomes various and loses its original simplicity. And let
us not wonder that the brutes follow nature more closely than human
beings, for in that respect even they are outstripped by inanimate
things, which, being dowered neither with imagination nor any appetite
or inclination contrary to nature, ever continue in the one path which
nature has prescribed for them, as if they were tied and bound. But in
brutes the gentleness of mood inspired by reason, the subtlety, the love
of freedom, are not qualities found in excess, but they have
unreasonable appetites and desires, and act in a roundabout way within
certain limits, riding, as it were, at the anchor of nature, and only
going straight under bit and bridle. But in man reason, which is
absolute master, inventing different modes and fashions of life, has
left no plain or evident trace of nature.[44]

Sec. II. Consider in their marriages how much the animals follow nature.
For they do not wait for any legislation about bachelor or late-married,
like the citizens of Lycurgus and Solon, nor do they fear penalties for
childlessness, nor are they anxious for the _jus trium liberorum_,[45]
like many of the Romans, who only marry and have children for the
privileges it bestows, not to have heirs, but to be qualified for
succeeding themselves to inheritances. Then, again, the male animal
does not go with the female at all times; for its aim is not pleasure
but procreation: so in the season of spring, the most appropriate time
for such pairings,[46] the female being submissive and tender attracts
the male by her beautiful condition of body, coming as she does from the
dew and fresh pastures, and when pregnant modestly retires and takes
thought for the birth and safety of her offspring. We cannot adequately
describe all this, but every animal exhibits f