על המידות הטובות כ״וOn the Virtues 26
א׳
1[134] So desirous is he to sow in divers forms the seeds of gentleness and moderation in their minds, that he lays down another enactment of the same nature as the preceding. He forbids them to sacrifice the mother and its offspring on the same day, for if they must be sacrificed, at any rate let it be at different times. It is the height of savagery to slay on the same day the generating cause and the living creature generated.
ב׳
2[135] And why does anyone do so? It must either be on the ground of sacrificing or to gratify the belly. If sacrifice is the reason, it gives the lie to the name, for such actions are slaughters, not sacrifices. Which of God’s altars will accept oblations so unhallowed; what fire would not fly asunder divided into two, shrinking from union with a thing so ill to blend with? Indeed, I think, it could not last for any time, however short, but would straightway die out, providing as it were that the air and sacred element of breath should not be defiled by the rising flame.
ג׳
3[136] If the object is not to sacrifice but to feast thereon, who would not spurn the strange and unnatural craving of this monstrous gluttony? For pleasure in abnormal forms is what such persons pursue, but though they have flesh to eat, what pleasure can they have, when the flesh which they taste is that of mother and offspring together? Indeed, if one should mix the limbs of the two and fix them on the spits to eat of the roast, these limbs, I think, would not remain mute, but break out into speech, indignant at the enormity of the unexampled treatment which they suffer, and hurl a host of invectives against the greediness of those who prepare these meats, fitter for a fast than for a feast.
ד׳
4[137] But observe that the law also banishes from the sacred precincts all pregnant animals and does not permit them to be sacrificed until they have been delivered, thus counting what is still in the depths of the womb as on the same footing as what has already been brought to the birth, not because creatures not yet advanced into the light rank equally with the others, but by implication to restrain the licence of those whose way is to bring everything to disorder.
ה׳
5[138] For if the life which is still growing like a plant and reckoned as part of the parent which carries it and now is at one with it, but in the course of months will be severed from the common organism, is, in the hope that it will become a living animal, safeguarded by the invulnerability of the mother, to prevent the occurrence of the above said defilement, how much more is this the case with the creatures already brought to the birth and endued with a body and soul of their own? For it is the very height of unholiness to kill mother and offspring on the same occasion and on the same day.
ו׳
6[139] It was on this principle, I think, that some legislators introduced the law that condemned women who commit deeds worthy of death should, if pregnant, be kept in custody until the child is born, lest their execution should carry with it the destruction of the life within the womb.
ז׳
7[140] These decrees of theirs apply to human beings, but Moses rising to a further height extended the duty of fair treatment even to irrational animals, so that by practising on creatures of dissimilar kind we may show humanity in a far fuller measure to beings of like kind to ourselves, abstaining from strokes and counter-strokes to vex each other, and not hoarding our personal good things as treasures, but throwing them into the common stock for all in every place, as for kinsmen and brothers by nature.
ח׳
8[141] After this let those clever libellers continue, if they can, to accuse the nation of misanthropy and charge the laws with enjoining unsociable and unfriendly practices, when these laws so clearly extend their compassion to flocks and herds, and our people through the instructions of the law learn from their earliest years to correct any wilfulness of souls to gentle behaviour.
ט׳
9[142] But so prolific is he in virtue and versatile in giving admirable lessons, that not content with his own prowess, he challenges it to a further contest. He has forbidden any lamb or kid or other like kind of livestock to be snatched away from its mother before it is weaned. He has also forbidden the killing of the mother and offspring on the same day. He now crowns his bounty with the words “Thou shalt not seethe a lamb in his mother’s milk.”
י׳
10[143] For he held that it was grossly improper that the substance which fed the living animal should be used to season and flavour the same after its death, and that while nature provided for its conservation by creating the stream of milk and ordaining that it should pass through the mother’s breasts as through conduits, the licence of man should rise to such a height as to misuse what had sustained its life to destroy also the body which remains in existence.
י״א
11[144] If indeed anyone thinks good to boil flesh in milk, let him do so without cruelty and keeping clear of impiety. Everywhere there are herds of cattle innumerable, which are milked every day by cowherds, goat-herds and shepherds, whose chief source of income as cattle rearers is milk, sometimes liquid and sometimes condensed and coagulated into cheese; and since milk is so abundant, the person who boils the flesh of lambs or kids or any other young animal in their mother’s milk, shows himself cruelly brutal in character and gelded of compassion, that most vital of emotions and most nearly akin to the rational soul.