Chapter XVIII.
Love is taught by crows to their offspring, and their impiety is condemned. Hawks and eagles are by no means to be accused of ruthlessness; but the coot that nourishes the abandoned eaglet is to be commended.
Humans learn to love their children through the usefulness and devotion of crows, who diligently accompany their flying children. They are anxious that their young ones may weakly fail, so they provide them with food and do not neglect the duties of nourishing them for a long time. But women of our kind wean them quickly, even those whom they love; or if they are wealthier, they grow tired of nursing. However, the poorer ones reject and abandon their little ones, and deny having taken them. The rich themselves, in order to prevent their wealth from being divided among many, kill their own fetuses in the womb, and extinguish the pledges of their own belly with deadly potions in the very genital chamber, before life is taken away, before it is handed over. Who taught, except a human, to disown their children? Who discovered such cruel laws of fathers? Who made unequal brothers out of the natural bonds of brotherhood? The sons of one wealthy man are cut down by different fates. One is overwhelmed by the distribution of the entire paternal inheritance, another laments the exhausted and destitute portion of the wealth-filled homeland. Did nature divide the merits of the children? She distributed equally to all, the substance necessary for birth and life. Let nature herself teach you not to differentiate based on inheritance, you who have treated those of equal birth with equal rights. Indeed, you should not envy those whom you have collectively given what they were born with, as nature has appointed them.
Accipitres are said to have a harshness towards their own offspring, because when they notice them attempting their first flights, they throw them out of their nests and eliminate them immediately; and if they hesitate, they repel them with their wings and make them fall, they beat them with their wings and force them to dare what they fear; and afterwards they do not bring them any nourishment. But why should we be surprised if they, accustomed to seizing, become disgusted with nurturing? Let us consider that they have been born for this, so that fear may also train birds to be cautious; so that they do not relax their vigilance everywhere, but anticipate dangers that must be avoided by predators. Then, when they have acquired a certain instinct for hunting with these, they seem to train their young more towards prey than towards giving up the advantages of being fed. They are careful that they do not become lazy in their tender age, that they are not spoiled by pleasures, that they do not wither away in idleness, that they do not learn to expect food rather than seek it, that they do not lose their natural strength. They interrupt their studies in nurturing so that they may force themselves boldly into the practice of seizing.
The eagle is also widely known for abandoning its offspring, but not both, only one out of the two chicks. Some have believed this to be due to the aversion to providing for two mouths. But I do not easily believe this, especially since Moses has given such a testimony of the eagle's love for its young, saying: As an eagle protects its nest and trusts in its young and spreads its wings; and takes them and carries them on its shoulders. The Lord alone led them (Deut. XXXII, 11). So how then does he spread his wings, if he kills the other? Therefore, I think that it does not become harsh due to the greed of nourishing it, but rather due to the judgment of examining. For it is always inclined to prove those whom it has begotten; so that the deformity of a degenerate offspring may not diminish the royal pinnacle of its own kind among all birds. Therefore, it is asserted that it exposes its young to the rays of the sun, and hangs the little ones by their claws in the middle of the air; and if someone, with the reflected light of the sun, preserves the fearless sight of the eyes with unharmed vigor, that person is proven to have demonstrated the constancy of a true gaze in accordance with the truth of nature. But if, on the other hand, with his eyes narrowed by the direct ray of the sun, he is rejected as degenerate and unworthy of such a parent; and he is not considered worthy of education, who was unworthy of being received. Therefore, he condemns him not with the harshness of nature, but with the integrity of judgment; not as if he were rejecting his own, but as if he were rejecting something foreign.
However, as it seems to some, the harshness of the royal bird is excused by the clemency of the common bird. For the bird, which is called fulica in Latin and φηνὴ in Greek, adopts or abandons, whether recognized or not, an eagle's chick with its own offspring; and, mixing them together, it nourishes and feeds them with the same care and supply of food as its own young. Therefore, the φηνὴ bird nourishes others, but we cast away our own with cruel harshness. But when an eagle casts away its young, it does not reject them as its own, but as not recognising them as its own kind: we, worse still, when we recognise them as ours, we abandon them.