03_Wilson_201_221_201_221 10/07/15 12:41 Pagina 209 209 MATTHEW, PHILO, AND MERCY FOR ANIMALS (MATT 12,9-14) 209 A sense of the Alexandrian’s priorities in support of this agenda can be deduced from the summary statement with which the section on animals and plants concludes. You see how much graciousness and kindness (to. crhsto,n) he dis- plays, and how he pours them forth on every kind, first of people … then of irrational animals … and finally of sown crops as well as trees. For one who has already learned fairness (evpiei,keian) in deal- ing with living things that lack perception will commit no wrong against those endowed with a soul, and one who does not attempt violence against beings with a soul is by extension (po,rrwqen) in- structed to take care of those that have reason. (Hum. 160) Lacking perception, in the order of created things plants are in- ferior to animals, which, lacking reason, in turn are inferior to human beings. The use of po,rrwqen (literally, “from afar”) in com- municating this hierarchy accords with the distance that in Philo’s view separates the different categories (cf. Spec. 4.203, 218; Hum. 116). As he contends elsewhere, the chief difference in the case of animals and human beings is to be found in the fact that the former are devoid of lo,goj (cf. Opif. 73; Spec. 2.83, 89; 4.123). Appealing to such a distinction, however, was not something that could simply be taken for granted but rather signals the Alexandrian’s participation in a long-standing philosophical debate 35. On the one hand, Platonists like Plutarch and Porphyry held that because animals are in fact possessed of lo,goj (albeit in imperfect forms), human beings have a kinship with them in reason and are therefore obligated to ex- tend them justice 36. The Stoics, on the other hand, argued that lo,goj constitutes “the categorical boundary marker between humans and animals” 37. Because the former have no community with the latter in reason, they have no community with them in justice 38. Instead, an- 35 For an overview of the basic positions, see R. SORABJI, Animal Minds and Human Morals. The Origins of the Western Debate (London 1993) 107-121. 36 See especially PLUTARCH, De sollertia animalium; PORPHYRY, De ab- stinentia; cf. SEXTUS EMPIRICUS, Pyrr. 1.62-77. 37 I.S. GILHUS, Animals, Gods and Humans. Changing Attitudes to Ani- mals in Greek, Roman and Early Christian Ideas (London 2006) 3. Cf. SVF II, 714-737. 38 E.g., SVF III, 367-376; MARCUS AURELIUS, Med. 6.23; M. POHLENZ, Die Stoa. Geschichte einer geistigen Bewegung (Göttingen 41970) I, 98-101.