Under the silver light of a crescent moon, a herd of elephants wades into a slow-moving river. They wash their bodies with solemn care, lifting their trunks toward the night sky in a gesture that early observers interpreted as genuine worship. When illness strikes, these massive animals lie on their backs and toss green branches upward, performing what ancient and early modern naturalists described as a sacred offering to the heavens.
Leonardo da Vinci copied this astonishing scene into his notebooks with deep respect. Drawing upon classical accounts from writers like Pliny the Elder, the Florentine thinker saw in the elephant a creature graced with virtues that humans frequently claimed yet rarely practiced. Among these traits were prudence, equity, and an instinct for religious observance. Leonardo was an avid advocate for the welfare of innocent creatures and favored a plant-centered life. To his mind, an elephant stepping carefully to avoid trampling a flock of sheep served as a powerful counterweight to human vanity.
This moonlit ritual sat near the heart of a vibrant Renaissance debate over the boundaries of the soul. Long before modern science began documenting animal grief, complex problem-solving, and cross-species communication, scholars across Europe were already questioning rigid divisions between species. If other creatures could remember, feel shame, communicate, and express reverence toward nature, human uniqueness required a far more nuanced defense than simple superiority.
The Italian philosopher Tommaso Campanella offered one of the most compelling investigations into this shared reality. Writing during the late Renaissance, Campanella viewed the natural world as a living organism suffused with divine wisdom. In his philosophy, the warmth of the sun acts on earthly matter to produce a refined, active breath called spiritus. This subtle breath animates animal bodies, shaping organs designed for survival and granting creatures an innate awareness of what harms or sustains them. Because every animal possesses this vital spirit, wisdom is distributed across the entire tapestry of life.
Campanella delighted in gathering evidence of animal intellect. He noted that hunting dogs use logic when choosing shortcuts to intercept their quarry, octopuses slip stones between open shells to keep oysters from closing, and spiders construct elaborate webs through intricate steps of calculation. He also recognized that animals experience complex passions. Classical accounts preserved tales of horses feeling profound moral anguish and elephants succumbing to grief after losing positions of honor.
Communication among animals was equally clear to Campanella. He argued that the diverse calls of birds and mammals carry precise meanings that humans simply fail to decode. A Polish dog brought to Naples responded only to Polish speech, proving that animals learn specific vocal patterns rather than acting on blind reflex. Where anatomical differences prevent speech, animals still express themselves through gestures, much like fish signaling with their gills or humans communicating through expressions and hand movements.
Within this framework, the elephant praying to the moon took on deep significance. Campanella recognized that the animal was expressing authentic gratitude toward the moon for the gift of night light that guided its wandering. This was a form of natural piety woven directly into the fabric of creation. At the same time, Campanella identified where humanity stood on different ground. While the elephant directed its reverence to the visible planet, humans possessed a transcendent divine mind called mens. This higher capability enabled people to look past visible nature toward the unseen source of the cosmos.
Campanella pointed out that humans arrive in the world in an exceptionally vulnerable state. Born without fur, shells, or built-in weaponry, a newborn human appears far less equipped for survival than a wild beast. Yet this initial frailty led directly to human greatness. By observing and imitating the natural world, humanity created architecture, medicine, navigation, and the arts.
Human life was distinguished above all by moral choice. An animal might alter its path under the pressure of immediate fear or physical desire, but a human being could pause, reflect upon uncertain outcomes, and freely choose virtue over impulse. Freedom meant having the power to resist the pull of immediate appetites, much like Ulysses binding himself against the call of the sirens.
These convictions stayed with Campanella even during his long confinement in the prisons of the Roman Inquisition. Debating theology with fellow inmates, he examined scriptural passages concerning the eventual redemption of creation. While he dismissed the idea that every flea and fly would return in future glory, he insisted that the dignity of the animal spirit must never be erased. He likened human existence to a worm inside the belly of the world, though one capable of growing wings like an angelic butterfly to soar toward the divine.
Looking back at these Renaissance thinkers provides a rich perspective for our own conversations about animal ethics and vegetarianism. The elephant saluting the moon in the notebooks of Leonardo and the treatises of Campanella invites us to look across the species boundary with wonder rather than condescension. Recognizing that other creatures possess intricate interior lives deepens our sense of kinship with nature, offering a quiet reminder that our unique freedom is best exercised through compassion, humility, and care for all living things.
Bibliographic Information
- Title: The Animal Soul and the Human Mind: Renaissance Debates
- Subtitle: Ricerche filosofiche e materiali storico-testuali
- Series: Bruniana & Campanelliana, Supplementi, xxxvi · Studi, 15
- Editor: Cecilia Muratori
- Publisher: Fabrizio Serra editore
- Publication Places: Pisa · Roma
- Publication Year: 2013 (MMXIII)
- Edition: First Edition (Monographic Essay Collection with Original Latin/Italian Source Appendices)
- ISBN: 978-88-6227-582-8
- e-ISBN: 978-88-6227-583-5
- ISSN: 1127-6045
- Institutional Support / Funding: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich Institutional Strategy LMUexcellent – Research Fellowships & LMU Mentoring-Programm; Center for Advanced Studies / CAS LMU)
- Historical Period Covered: 15th to early 17th Century (Renaissance and Early Modern Period: c. 1400–1640), with deep contextual anchors in Classical Antiquity (Presocratics, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Lucretius, Plutarch, Porphyry, Sextus Empiricus, Galen), Late Antiquity/Early Church Fathers (Lactantius, Augustine, Philo of Alexandria), Medieval Philosophy (Johannes Scotus Eriugena, Avicenna, Averroes, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart, Biagio Pelacani da Parma), and Early Modern transitions (Descartes, Spinoza, Bacon, Gassendi, Willis).
- Main Subject Areas: Renaissance Philosophy, History of Philosophy of Mind, Philosophical Anthropology, Zoology and Astrobiology, Cognitive Faculties in Nonhuman Animals, Intellectual vs. Sensitive Soul, Theories of Spontaneous Generation (generatio aequivoca / ex putri), Comparative Epistemology, Renaissance Skepticism, Animal Language and Semiotics, Affective Psychology and Passions.
(Ch. Intro, 11; pp. 24, 212)