3 – Of Cruelty

(Found Poem in Michel de Montainge’s “Of Cruelty” translated by George B. Ives)

For my part, even in matters of justice, any thing 
that is beyond mere death seems to me pure cruelty.

We should practice these inhuman barbarities
on what is insensible, not on the living flesh.

We find nothing in the ancient histories 
more excessive than what we experience every day.

Nature has herself implanted in man some instinct of inhumanity.
Considering that one master has placed us in this palace for his service.

For that is the extreme limit that cruelty can attain.
That a man should kill a man solely as spectacle!