we are. For some are armed with horns and
tusks and stings, and as for the hedgehog, as Empedocles says, it has
its back all rough with sharp bristles, and some are shod and protected
by scales and fur and talons and hoofs worn smooth by use, whereas man
alone, as Plato says, is left by nature naked, unarmed, unshod, and
uncovered. But by one gift, that of reason and painstaking and
forethought, nature compensates for all these deficiencies. "Small
indeed is the strength of man, but by the versatility of his intellect
he can tame the inhabitants of the sea, earth, and air."[951] Nothing is
more agile and swift than horses, yet they run for man; the dog is a
courageous and high-spirited creature, yet it guards man; fish is most
pleasant to the taste, the pig the fattest of all animals, yet both are
food and delicacies for man. What is huger or more formidable in
appearance than the elephant? Yet it is man's plaything, and a spectacle
at public shows, and learns to dance and kneel. And all these things are
not idly introduced, but to the end that they may teach us to what
heights reason raises man, and what things it sets him above, and how it
makes him master of everything.

"For we are not good boxers, nor good wrestlers,
Nor yet swift runners,"[952]

for in all these points we are less fortunate than the beasts. But by
our experience and memory and wisdom and cunning, as Anaxagoras says, we
make use of them, and get their honey and milk, and catch them, and
drive and lead them about at our will. And there is nothing of fortune
in this, it is all the result of wisdom and forethought.

Sec. IV. Moreover the labours of carpenters and coppersmiths and
house-builders and statue-makers are affairs of mortals, and we see that
no success in such trades is got by fortune or chance. For that fortune
plays a very small part in the life of a wise man, whether coppersmith
or house-builder, and that the greatest works are wrought by art alone,
is shown by the poet in the following lines:--

"All handicraftsmen go into the street,
Ye that with fan-shaped baskets worship Ergane,
Zeus' fierce-eyed daughter;"[953]

for Ergane[954] and Athene, and not Fortune, do the trades regard as
their patrons. They do indeed say that Nealces,[955] on one occasion
painting a horse, was quite satisfied with his painting in all other
respects, but that some foam on the bridle from the horse's breath did
not please him, so that he fre