De Rerum Natura
Lucretius
Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. William Ellery Leonard. E. P. Dutton. 1916.
- Now come, this wisdom by my sweet toil sought
- Look thou perceive, lest haply thou shouldst guess
- That the white objects shining to thine eyes
- Are gendered of white atoms, or the black
- Of a black seed; or yet believe that aught
- That's steeped in any hue should take its dye
- From bits of matter tinct with hue the same.
- For matter's bodies own no hue the least-
- Or like to objects or, again, unlike.
- But, if percase it seem to thee that mind
- Itself can dart no influence of its own
- Into these bodies, wide thou wand'rest off.
- For since the blind-born, who have ne'er surveyed
- The light of sun, yet recognise by touch
- Things that from birth had ne'er a hue for them,
- 'Tis thine to know that bodies can be brought
- No less unto the ken of our minds too,
- Though yet those bodies with no dye be smeared.
- Again, ourselves whatever in the dark
- We touch, the same we do not find to be
- Tinctured with any colour.
- Now that here
- I win the argument, I next will teach
- . . . . . .
- Now, every colour changes, none except,
- And every...
- Which the primordials ought nowise to do.
- Since an immutable somewhat must remain,
- Lest all things utterly be brought to naught.
- For change of anything from out its bounds
- Means instant death of that which was before.
- Wherefore be mindful not to stain with colour
- The seeds of things, lest things return for thee
- All utterly to naught.
- But now, if seeds
- Receive no property of colour, and yet
- Be still endowed with variable forms
- From which all kinds of colours they beget
- And vary (by reason that ever it matters much
- With what seeds, and in what positions joined,
- And what the motions that they give and get),
- Forthwith most easily thou mayst devise
- Why what was black of hue an hour ago
- Can of a sudden like the marble gleam,-
- As ocean, when the high winds have upheaved
- Its level plains, is changed to hoary waves
- Of marble whiteness: for, thou mayst declare,
- That, when the thing we often see as black
- Is in its matter then commixed anew,
- Some atoms rearranged, and some withdrawn,
- And added some, 'tis seen forthwith to turn
- Glowing and white. But if of azure seeds
- Consist the level waters of the deep,
- They could in nowise whiten: for however
- Thou shakest azure seeds, the same can never
- Pass into marble hue. But, if the seeds-
- Which thus produce the ocean's one pure sheen-
- Be now with one hue, now another dyed,
- As oft from alien forms and divers shapes
- A cube's produced all uniform in shape,
- 'Twould be but natural, even as in the cube
- We see the forms to be dissimilar,
- That thus we'd see in brightness of the deep
- (Or in whatever one pure sheen thou wilt)
- Colours diverse and all dissimilar.
- Besides, the unlike shapes don't thwart the least
- The whole in being externally a cube;
- But differing hues of things do block and keep
- The whole from being of one resultant hue.
- Then, too, the reason which entices us
- At times to attribute colours to the seeds
- Falls quite to pieces, since white things are not
- Create from white things, nor are black from black,
- But evermore they are create from things
- Of divers colours. Verily, the white
- Will rise more readily, is sooner born
- Out of no colour, than of black or aught
- Which stands in hostile opposition thus.
- Besides, since colours cannot be, sans light,
- And the primordials come not forth to light,
- 'Tis thine to know they are not clothed with colour-
- Truly, what kind of colour could there be
- In the viewless dark? Nay, in the light itself
- A colour changes, gleaming variedly,
- When smote by vertical or slanting ray.
- Thus in the sunlight shows the down of doves
- That circles, garlanding, the nape and throat:
- Now it is ruddy with a bright gold-bronze,
- Now, by a strange sensation it becomes
- Green-emerald blended with the coral-red.
- The peacock's tail, filled with the copious light,
- Changes its colours likewise, when it turns.
- Wherefore, since by some blow of light begot,
- Without such blow these colours can't become.
- And since the pupil of the eye receives
- Within itself one kind of blow, when said
- To feel a white hue, then another kind,
- When feeling a black or any other hue,
- And since it matters nothing with what hue
- The things thou touchest be perchance endowed,
- But rather with what sort of shape equipped,
- 'Tis thine to know the atoms need not colour,
- But render forth sensations, as of touch,
- That vary with their varied forms.
- Besides,
- Since special shapes have not a special colour,
- And all formations of the primal germs
- Can be of any sheen thou wilt, why, then,
- Are not those objects which are of them made
- Suffused, each kind with colours of every kind?
- For then 'twere meet that ravens, as they fly,
- Should dartle from white pinions a white sheen,
- Or swans turn black from seed of black, or be
- Of any single varied dye thou wilt.
- Again, the more an object's rent to bits,
- The more thou see its colour fade away
- Little by little till 'tis quite extinct;
- As happens when the gaudy linen's picked
- Shred after shred away: the purple there,
- Phoenician red, most brilliant of all dyes,
- Is lost asunder, ravelled thread by thread;
- Hence canst perceive the fragments die away
- From out their colour, long ere they depart
- Back to the old primordials of things.
- And, last, since thou concedest not all bodies
- Send out a voice or smell, it happens thus
- That not to all thou givest sounds and smells.
- So, too, since we behold not all with eyes,
- 'Tis thine to know some things there are as much
- Orphaned of colour, as others without smell,
- And reft of sound; and those the mind alert
- No less can apprehend than it can mark
- The things that lack some other qualities.
- But think not haply that the primal bodies
- Remain despoiled alone of colour: so,
- Are they from warmth dissevered and from cold
- And from hot exhalations; and they move,
- Both sterile of sound and dry of juice; and throw
- Not any odour from their proper bodies.
- Just as, when undertaking to prepare
- A liquid balm of myrrh and marjoram,
- And flower of nard, which to our nostrils breathes
- Odour of nectar, first of all behooves
- Thou seek, as far as find thou may and can,
- The inodorous olive-oil (which never sends
- One whiff of scent to nostrils), that it may
- The least debauch and ruin with sharp tang
- The odorous essence with its body mixed
- And in it seethed. And on the same account
- The primal germs of things must not be thought
- To furnish colour in begetting things,
- Nor sound, since pow'rless they to send forth aught
- From out themselves, nor any flavour, too,
- Nor cold, nor exhalation hot or warm.
- . . . . . .
- The rest; yet since these things are mortal all-
- The pliant mortal, with a body soft;
- The brittle mortal, with a crumbling frame;
- The hollow with a porous-all must be
- Disjoined from the primal elements,
- If still we wish under the world to lay
- Immortal ground-works, whereupon may rest
- The sum of weal and safety, lest for thee
- All things return to nothing utterly.
- Now, too: whate'er we see possessing sense
- Must yet confessedly be stablished all
- From elements insensate. And those signs,
- So clear to all and witnessed out of hand,
- Do not refute this dictum nor oppose;
- But rather themselves do lead us by the hand,
- Compelling belief that living things are born
- Of elements insensate, as I say.
- Sooth, we may see from out the stinking dung
- Live worms spring up, when, after soaking rains,
- The drenched earth rots; and all things change the same:
- Lo, change the rivers, the fronds, the gladsome pastures
- Into the cattle, the cattle their nature change
- Into our bodies, and from our body, oft
- Grow strong the powers and bodies of wild beasts
- And mighty-winged birds. Thus nature changes
- All foods to living frames, and procreates
- From them the senses of live creatures all,
- In manner about as she uncoils in flames
- Dry logs of wood and turns them all to fire.
- And seest not, therefore, how it matters much
- After what order are set the primal germs,
- And with what other germs they all are mixed,
- And what the motions that they give and get?
- But now, what is't that strikes thy sceptic mind,
- Constraining thee to sundry arguments
- Against belief that from insensate germs
- The sensible is gendered?- Verily,
- 'Tis this: that liquids, earth, and wood, though mixed,
- Are yet unable to gender vital sense.
- And, therefore, 'twill be well in these affairs
- This to remember: that I have not said
- Senses are born, under conditions all,
- From all things absolutely which create
- Objects that feel; but much it matters here
- Firstly, how small the seeds which thus compose
- The feeling thing, then, with what shapes endowed,
- And lastly what they in positions be,
- In motions, in arrangements. Of which facts
- Naught we perceive in logs of wood and clods;
- And yet even these, when sodden by the rains,
- Give birth to wormy grubs, because the bodies
- Of matter, from their old arrangements stirred
- By the new factor, then combine anew
- In such a way as genders living things.
- Next, they who deem that feeling objects can
- From feeling objects be create, and these,
- In turn, from others that are wont to feel
- . . . . . .
- When soft they make them; for all sense is linked
- With flesh, and thews, and veins- and such, we see,
- Are fashioned soft and of a mortal frame.
- Yet be't that these can last forever on:
- They'll have the sense that's proper to a part,
- Or else be judged to have a sense the same
- As that within live creatures as a whole.
- But of themselves those parts can never feel,
- For all the sense in every member back
- To something else refers- a severed hand,
- Or any other member of our frame,
- Itself alone cannot support sensation.
- It thus remains they must resemble, then,
- Live creatures as a whole, to have the power
- Of feeling sensation concordant in each part
- With the vital sense; and so they're bound to feel
- The things we feel exactly as do we.
- If such the case, how, then, can they be named
- The primal germs of things, and how avoid
- The highways of destruction?- since they be
- Mere living things and living things be all
- One and the same with mortal. Grant they could,
- Yet by their meetings and their unions all,
- Naught would result, indeed, besides a throng
- And hurly-burly all of living things-
- Precisely as men, and cattle, and wild beasts,
- By mere conglomeration each with each
- Can still beget not anything of new.
- But if by chance they lose, inside a body,
- Their own sense and another sense take on,
- What, then, avails it to assign them that
- Which is withdrawn thereafter? And besides,
- To touch on proof that we pronounced before,
- Just as we see the eggs of feathered fowls
- To change to living chicks, and swarming worms
- To bubble forth when from the soaking rains
- The earth is sodden, sure, sensations all
- Can out of non-sensations be begot.
- But if one say that sense can so far rise
- From non-sense by mutation, or because
- Brought forth as by a certain sort of birth,
- 'Twill serve to render plain to him and prove
- There is no birth, unless there be before
- Some formed union of the elements,
- Nor any change, unless they be unite.
- In first place, senses can't in body be
- Before its living nature's been begot,-
- Since all its stuff, in faith, is held dispersed
- About through rivers, air, and earth, and all
- That is from earth created, nor has met
- In combination, and, in proper mode,
- Conjoined into those vital motions which
- Kindle the all-perceiving senses- they
- That keep and guard each living thing soever.
- Again, a blow beyond its nature's strength
- Shatters forthwith each living thing soe'er,
- And on it goes confounding all the sense
- Of body and mind. For of the primal germs
- Are loosed their old arrangements, and, throughout,
- The vital motions blocked,- until the stuff,
- Shaken profoundly through the frame entire,
- Undoes the vital knots of soul from body
- And throws that soul, to outward wide-dispersed,
- Through all the pores. For what may we surmise
- A blow inflicted can achieve besides
- Shaking asunder and loosening all apart?
- It happens also, when less sharp the blow,
- The vital motions which are left are wont
- Oft to win out- win out, and stop and still
- The uncouth tumults gendered by the blow,
- And call each part to its own courses back,
- And shake away the motion of death which now
- Begins its own dominion in the body,
- And kindle anew the senses almost gone.
- For by what other means could they the more
- Collect their powers of thought and turn again
- From very doorways of destruction
- Back unto life, rather than pass whereto
- They be already well-nigh sped and so
- Pass quite away?
- Again, since pain is there
- Where bodies of matter, by some force stirred up,
- Through vitals and through joints, within their seats
- Quiver and quake inside, but soft delight,
- When they remove unto their place again:
- 'Tis thine to know the primal germs can be
- Assaulted by no pain, nor from themselves
- Take no delight; because indeed they are
- Not made of any bodies of first things,
- Under whose strange new motions they might ache
- Or pluck the fruit of any dear new sweet.
- And so they must be furnished with no sense.
- Once more, if thus, that every living thing
- May have sensation, needful 'tis to assign
- Sense also to its elements, what then
- Of those fixed elements from which mankind
- Hath been, by their peculiar virtue, formed?
- Of verity, they'll laugh aloud, like men,
- Shaken asunder by a spasm of mirth,
- Or sprinkle with dewy tear-drops cheeks and chins,
- And have the cunning hardihood to say
- Much on the composition of the world,
- And in their turn inquire what elements
- They have themselves,- since, thus the same in kind
- As a whole mortal creature, even they
- Must also be from other elements,
- And then those others from others evermore-
- So that thou darest nowhere make a stop.
- Oho, I'll follow thee until thou grant
- The seed (which here thou say'st speaks, laughs, and thinks)
- Is yet derived out of other seeds
- Which in their turn are doing just the same.
- But if we see what raving nonsense this,
- And that a man may laugh, though not, forsooth,
- Compounded out of laughing elements,
- And think and utter reason with learn'd speech,
- Though not himself compounded, for a fact,
- Of sapient seeds and eloquent, why, then,
- Cannot those things which we perceive to have
- Their own sensation be composed as well
- Of intermixed seeds quite void of sense?
- Once more, we all from seed celestial spring,
- To all is that same father, from whom earth,
- The fostering mother, as she takes the drops
- Of liquid moisture, pregnant bears her broods-
- The shining grains, and gladsome shrubs and trees,
- And bears the human race and of the wild
- The generations all, the while she yields
- The foods wherewith all feed their frames and lead
- The genial life and propagate their kind;
- Wherefore she owneth that maternal name,
- By old desert. What was before from earth,
- The same in earth sinks back, and what was sent
- From shores of ether, that, returning home,
- The vaults of sky receive. Nor thus doth death
- So far annihilate things that she destroys
- The bodies of matter; but she dissipates
- Their combinations, and conjoins anew
- One element with others; and contrives
- That all things vary forms and change their colours
- And get sensations and straight give them o'er.
- And thus may'st know it matters with what others
- And in what structure the primordial germs
- Are held together, and what motions they
- Among themselves do give and get; nor think
- That aught we see hither and thither afloat
- Upon the crest of things, and now a birth
- And straightway now a ruin, inheres at rest
- Deep in the eternal atoms of the world.
- Why, even in these our very verses here
- It matters much with what and in what order
- Each element is set: the same denote
- Sky, and the ocean, lands, and streams, and sun;
- The same, the grains, and trees, and living things.
- And if not all alike, at least the most-
- But what distinctions by positions wrought!
- And thus no less in things themselves, when once
- Around are changed the intervals between,
- The paths of matter, its connections, weights,
- Blows, clashings, motions, order, structure, shapes,
- The things themselves must likewise changed be.
- Now to true reason give thy mind for us.
- Since here strange truth is putting forth its might
- To hit thee in thine ears, a new aspect
- Of things to show its front. Yet naught there is
- So easy that it standeth not at first
- More hard to credit than it after is;
- And naught soe'er that's great to such degree,
- Nor wonderful so far, but all mankind
- Little by little abandon their surprise.
- Look upward yonder at the bright clear sky
- And what it holds- the stars that wander o'er,
- The moon, the radiance of the splendour-sun:
- Yet all, if now they first for mortals were,
- If unforeseen now first asudden shown,
- What might there be more wonderful to tell,
- What that the nations would before have dared
- Less to believe might be?- I fancy, naught-
- So strange had been the marvel of that sight.
- The which o'erwearied to behold, to-day
- None deigns look upward to those lucent realms.
- Then, spew not reason from thy mind away,
- Beside thyself because the matter's new,
- But rather with keen judgment nicely weigh;
- And if to thee it then appeareth true,
- Render thy hands, or, if 'tis false at last,
- Gird thee to combat. For my mind-of-man
- Now seeks the nature of the vast Beyond
- There on the other side, that boundless sum
- Which lies without the ramparts of the world,
- Toward which the spirit longs to peer afar,
- Toward which indeed the swift elan of thought
- Flies unencumbered forth.
- Firstly, we find,
- Off to all regions round, on either side,
- Above, beneath, throughout the universe
- End is there none- as I have taught, as too
- The very thing of itself declares aloud,
- And as from nature of the unbottomed deep
- Shines clearly forth. Nor can we once suppose
- In any way 'tis likely, (seeing that space
- To all sides stretches infinite and free,
- And seeds, innumerable in number, in sum
- Bottomless, there in many a manner fly,
- Bestirred in everlasting motion there),
- That only this one earth and sky of ours
- Hath been create and that those bodies of stuff,
- So many, perform no work outside the same;
- Seeing, moreover, this world too hath been
- By nature fashioned, even as seeds of things
- By innate motion chanced to clash and cling-
- After they'd been in many a manner driven
- Together at random, without design, in vain-
- And as at last those seeds together dwelt,
- Which, when together of a sudden thrown,
- Should alway furnish the commencements fit
- Of mighty things- the earth, the sea, the sky,
- And race of living creatures. Thus, I say,
- Again, again, 'tmust be confessed there are
- Such congregations of matter otherwhere,
- Like this our world which vasty ether holds
- In huge embrace.
- Besides, when matter abundant
- Is ready there, when space on hand, nor object
- Nor any cause retards, no marvel 'tis
- That things are carried on and made complete,
- Perforce. And now, if store of seeds there is
- So great that not whole life-times of the living
- Can count the tale...
- And if their force and nature abide the same,
- Able to throw the seeds of things together
- Into their places, even as here are thrown
- The seeds together in this world of ours,
- 'Tmust be confessed in other realms there are
- Still other worlds, still other breeds of men,
- And other generations of the wild.
- Hence too it happens in the sum there is
- No one thing single of its kind in birth,
- And single and sole in growth, but rather it is
- One member of some generated race,
- Among full many others of like kind.
- First, cast thy mind abroad upon the living:
- Thou'lt find the race of mountain-ranging wild
- Even thus to be, and thus the scions of men
- To be begot, and lastly the mute flocks
- Of scaled fish, and winged frames of birds.
- Wherefore confess we must on grounds the same
- That earth, sun, moon, and ocean, and all else,
- Exist not sole and single- rather in number
- Exceeding number. Since that deeply set
- Old boundary stone of life remains for them
- No less, and theirs a body of mortal birth
- No less, than every kind which here on earth
- Is so abundant in its members found.
- Which well perceived if thou hold in mind,
- Then Nature, delivered from every haughty lord,
- And forthwith free, is seen to do all things
- Herself and through herself of own accord,
- Rid of all gods. For- by their holy hearts
- Which pass in long tranquillity of peace
- Untroubled ages and a serene life!-
- Who hath the power (I ask), who hath the power
- To rule the sum of the immeasurable,
- To hold with steady hand the giant reins
- Of the unfathomed deep? Who hath the power
- At once to roll a multitude of skies,
- At once to heat with fires ethereal all
- The fruitful lands of multitudes of worlds,
- To be at all times in all places near,
- To stablish darkness by his clouds, to shake
- The serene spaces of the sky with sound,
- And hurl his lightnings,- ha, and whelm how oft
- In ruins his own temples, and to rave,
- Retiring to the wildernesses, there
- At practice with that thunderbolt of his,
- Which yet how often shoots the guilty by,
- And slays the honourable blameless ones!
- Ere since the birth-time of the world, ere since
- The risen first-born day of sea, earth, sun,
- Have many germs been added from outside,
- Have many seeds been added round about,
- Which the great All, the while it flung them on,
- Brought hither, that from them the sea and lands
- Could grow more big, and that the house of heaven
- Might get more room and raise its lofty roofs
- Far over earth, and air arise around.
- For bodies all, from out all regions, are
- Divided by blows, each to its proper thing,
- And all retire to their own proper kinds:
- The moist to moist retires; earth gets increase
- From earthy body; and fires, as on a forge,
- Beat out new fire; and ether forges ether;
- Till nature, author and ender of the world,
- Hath led all things to extreme bound of growth:
- As haps when that which hath been poured inside
- The vital veins of life is now no more
- Than that which ebbs within them and runs off.
- This is the point where life for each thing ends;
- This is the point where nature with her powers
- Curbs all increase. For whatsoe'er thou seest
- Grow big with glad increase, and step by step
- Climb upward to ripe age, these to themselves
- Take in more bodies than they send from selves,
- Whilst still the food is easily infused
- Through all the veins, and whilst the things are not
- So far expanded that they cast away
- Such numerous atoms as to cause a waste
- Greater than nutriment whereby they wax.
- For 'tmust be granted, truly, that from things
- Many a body ebbeth and runs off;
- But yet still more must come, until the things
- Have touched development's top pinnacle;
- Then old age breaks their powers and ripe strength
- And falls away into a worser part.
- For ever the ampler and more wide a thing,
- As soon as ever its augmentation ends,
- It scatters abroad forthwith to all sides round
- More bodies, sending them from out itself.
- Nor easily now is food disseminate
- Through all its veins; nor is that food enough
- To equal with a new supply on hand
- Those plenteous exhalations it gives off.
- Thus, fairly, all things perish, when with ebbing
- They're made less dense and when from blows without
- They are laid low; since food at last will fail
- Extremest eld, and bodies from outside
- Cease not with thumping to undo a thing
- And overmaster by infesting blows.
- Thus, too, the ramparts of the mighty world
- On all sides round shall taken be by storm,
- And tumble to wrack and shivered fragments down.
- For food it is must keep things whole, renewing;
- 'Tis food must prop and give support to all,-
- But to no purpose, since nor veins suffice
- To hold enough, nor nature ministers
- As much as needful. And even now 'tis thus:
- Its age is broken and the earth, outworn
- With many parturitions, scarce creates
- The little lives- she who created erst
- All generations and gave forth at birth
- Enormous bodies of wild beasts of old.
- For never, I fancy, did a golden cord
- From off the firmament above let down
- The mortal generations to the fields;
- Nor sea, nor breakers pounding on the rocks
- Created them; but earth it was who bore-
- The same to-day who feeds them from herself.
- Besides, herself of own accord, she first
- The shining grains and vineyards of all joy
- Created for mortality; herself
- Gave the sweet fruitage and the pastures glad,
- Which now to-day yet scarcely wax in size,
- Even when aided by our toiling arms.
- We break the ox, and wear away the strength
- Of sturdy farm-hands; iron tools to-day
- Barely avail for tilling of the fields,
- So niggardly they grudge our harvestings,
- So much increase our labour. Now to-day
- The aged ploughman, shaking of his head,
- Sighs o'er and o'er that labours of his hands
- Have fallen out in vain, and, as he thinks
- How present times are not as times of old,
- Often he praises the fortunes of his sire,
- And crackles, prating, how the ancient race,
- Fulfilled with piety, supported life
- With simple comfort in a narrow plot,
- Since, man for man, the measure of each field
- Was smaller far i' the old days. And, again,
- The gloomy planter of the withered vine
- Rails at the season's change and wearies heaven,
- Nor grasps that all of things by sure degrees
- Are wasting away and going to the tomb,
- Outworn by venerable length of life.
- O thou who first uplifted in such dark
- So clear a torch aloft, who first shed light
- Upon the profitable ends of man,
- O thee I follow, glory of the Greeks,
- And set my footsteps squarely planted now
- Even in the impress and the marks of thine-
- Less like one eager to dispute the palm,
- More as one craving out of very love
- That I may copy thee!- for how should swallow
- Contend with swans or what compare could be
- In a race between young kids with tumbling legs
- And the strong might of the horse? Our father thou,
- And finder-out of truth, and thou to us
- Suppliest a father's precepts; and from out
- Those scriven leaves of thine, renowned soul
- (Like bees that sip of all in flowery wolds),
- We feed upon thy golden sayings all-
- Golden, and ever worthiest endless life.
- For soon as ever thy planning thought that sprang
- From god-like mind begins its loud proclaim
- Of nature's courses, terrors of the brain
- Asunder flee, the ramparts of the world
- Dispart away, and through the void entire
- I see the movements of the universe.
- Rises to vision the majesty of gods,
- And their abodes of everlasting calm
- Which neither wind may shake nor rain-cloud splash,
- Nor snow, congealed by sharp frosts, may harm
- With its white downfall: ever, unclouded sky
- O'er roofs, and laughs with far-diffused light.
- And nature gives to them their all, nor aught
- May ever pluck their peace of mind away.
- But nowhere to my vision rise no more
- The vaults of Acheron, though the broad earth
- Bars me no more from gazing down o'er all
- Which under our feet is going on below
- Along the void. O, here in these affairs
- Some new divine delight and trembling awe
- Takes hold through me, that thus by power of thine
- Nature, so plain and manifest at last,
- Hath been on every side laid bare to man!
- And since I've taught already of what sort
- The seeds of all things are, and how, distinct
- In divers forms, they flit of own accord,
- Stirred with a motion everlasting on,
- And in what mode things be from them create,
- Now, after such matters, should my verse, meseems,
- Make clear the nature of the mind and soul,
- And drive that dread of Acheron without,
- Headlong, which so confounds our human life
- Unto its deeps, pouring o'er all that is
- The black of death, nor leaves not anything
- To prosper- a liquid and unsullied joy.
- For as to what men sometimes will affirm:
- That more than Tartarus (the realm of death)
- They fear diseases and a life of shame,
- And know the substance of the soul is blood,
- Or rather wind (if haply thus their whim),
- And so need naught of this our science, then
- Thou well may'st note from what's to follow now
- That more for glory do they braggart forth
- Than for belief. For mark these very same:
- Exiles from country, fugitives afar
- From sight of men, with charges foul attaint,
- Abased with every wretchedness, they yet
- Live, and where'er the wretches come, they yet
- Make the ancestral sacrifices there,
- Butcher the black sheep, and to gods below
- Offer the honours, and in bitter case
- Turn much more keenly to religion.
- Wherefore, it's surer testing of a man
- In doubtful perils- mark him as he is
- Amid adversities; for then alone
- Are the true voices conjured from his breast,
- The mask off-stripped, reality behind.
- And greed, again, and the blind lust of honours
- Which force poor wretches past the bounds of law,
- And, oft allies and ministers of crime,
- To push through nights and days with hugest toil
- To rise untrammelled to the peaks of power-
- These wounds of life in no mean part are kept
- Festering and open by this fright of death.
- For ever we see fierce Want and foul Disgrace
- Dislodged afar from secure life and sweet,
- Like huddling Shapes before the doors of death.
- And whilst, from these, men wish to scape afar,
- Driven by false terror, and afar remove,
- With civic blood a fortune they amass,
- They double their riches, greedy, heapers-up
- Of corpse on corpse they have a cruel laugh
- For the sad burial of a brother-born,
- And hatred and fear of tables of their kin.
- Likewise, through this same terror, envy oft
- Makes them to peak because before their eyes
- That man is lordly, that man gazed upon
- Who walks begirt with honour glorious,
- Whilst they in filth and darkness roll around;
- Some perish away for statues and a name,
- And oft to that degree, from fright of death,
- Will hate of living and beholding light
- Take hold on humankind that they inflict
- Their own destruction with a gloomy heart-
- Forgetful that this fear is font of cares,
- This fear the plague upon their sense of shame,
- And this that breaks the ties of comradry
- And oversets all reverence and faith,
- Mid direst slaughter. For long ere to-day
- Often were traitors to country and dear parents
- Through quest to shun the realms of Acheron.
- For just as children tremble and fear all
- In the viewless dark, so even we at times
- Dread in the light so many things that be
- No whit more fearsome than what children feign,
- Shuddering, will be upon them in the dark.
- This terror, then, this darkness of the mind,
- Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light,
- Nor glittering arrows of morning sun disperse,
- But only nature's aspect and her law.
- First, then, I say, the mind which oft we call
- The intellect, wherein is seated life's
- Counsel and regimen, is part no less
- Of man than hand and foot and eyes are parts
- Of one whole breathing creature. [But some hold]
- That sense of mind is in no fixed part seated,
- But is of body some one vital state,-
- Named "harmony" by Greeks, because thereby
- We live with sense, though intellect be not
- In any part: as oft the body is said
- To have good health (when health, however, 's not
- One part of him who has it), so they place
- The sense of mind in no fixed part of man.
- Mightily, diversly, meseems they err.
- Often the body palpable and seen
- Sickens, while yet in some invisible part
- We feel a pleasure; oft the other way,
- A miserable in mind feels pleasure still
- Throughout his body- quite the same as when
- A foot may pain without a pain in head.
- Besides, when these our limbs are given o'er
- To gentle sleep and lies the burdened frame
- At random void of sense, a something else
- Is yet within us, which upon that time
- Bestirs itself in many a wise, receiving
- All motions of joy and phantom cares of heart.
- Now, for to see that in man's members dwells
- Also the soul, and body ne'er is wont
- To feel sensation by a "harmony"
- Take this in chief: the fact that life remains
- Oft in our limbs, when much of body's gone;
- Yet that same life, when particles of heat,
- Though few, have scattered been, and through the mouth
- Air has been given forth abroad, forthwith
- Forever deserts the veins, and leaves the bones.
- Thus mayst thou know that not all particles
- Perform like parts, nor in like manner all
- Are props of weal and safety: rather those-
- The seeds of wind and exhalations warm-
- Take care that in our members life remains.
- Therefore a vital heat and wind there is
- Within the very body, which at death
- Deserts our frames. And so, since nature of mind
- And even of soul is found to be, as 'twere,
- A part of man, give over "harmony"-
- Name to musicians brought from Helicon,-
- Unless themselves they filched it otherwise,
- To serve for what was lacking name till then.
- Whate'er it be, they're welcome to it- thou,
- Hearken my other maxims.
- Mind and soul,
- I say, are held conjoined one with other,
- And form one single nature of themselves;
- But chief and regnant through the frame entire
- Is still that counsel which we call the mind,
- And that cleaves seated in the midmost breast.
- Here leap dismay and terror; round these haunts
- Be blandishments of joys; and therefore here
- The intellect, the mind. The rest of soul,
- Throughout the body scattered, but obeys-
- Moved by the nod and motion of the mind.
- This, for itself, sole through itself, hath thought;
- This for itself hath mirth, even when the thing
- That moves it, moves nor soul nor body at all.
- And as, when head or eye in us is smit
- By assailing pain, we are not tortured then
- Through all the body, so the mind alone
- Is sometimes smitten, or livens with a joy,
- Whilst yet the soul's remainder through the limbs
- And through the frame is stirred by nothing new.
- But when the mind is moved by shock more fierce,
- We mark the whole soul suffering all at once
- Along man's members: sweats and pallors spread
- Over the body, and the tongue is broken,
- And fails the voice away, and ring the ears,
- Mists blind the eyeballs, and the joints collapse,-
- Aye, men drop dead from terror of the mind.
- Hence, whoso will can readily remark
- That soul conjoined is with mind, and, when
- 'Tis strook by influence of the mind, forthwith
- In turn it hits and drives the body too.
- And this same argument establisheth
- That nature of mind and soul corporeal is:
- For when 'tis seen to drive the members on,
- To snatch from sleep the body, and to change
- The countenance, and the whole state of man
- To rule and turn,- what yet could never be
- Sans contact, and sans body contact fails-
- Must we not grant that mind and soul consist
- Of a corporeal nature?- And besides
- Thou markst that likewise with this body of ours
- Suffers the mind and with our body feels.
- If the dire speed of spear that cleaves the bones
- And bares the inner thews hits not the life,
- Yet follows a fainting and a foul collapse,
- And, on the ground, dazed tumult in the mind,
- And whiles a wavering will to rise afoot.
- So nature of mind must be corporeal, since
- From stroke and spear corporeal 'tis in throes.
- Now, of what body, what components formed
- Is this same mind I will go on to tell.
- First, I aver, 'tis superfine, composed
- Of tiniest particles- that such the fact
- Thou canst perceive, if thou attend, from this:
- Nothing is seen to happen with such speed
- As what the mind proposes and begins;
- Therefore the same bestirs itself more swiftly
- Than aught whose nature's palpable to eyes.
- But what's so agile must of seeds consist
- Most round, most tiny, that they may be moved,
- When hit by impulse slight. So water moves,
- In waves along, at impulse just the least-
- Being create of little shapes that roll;
- But, contrariwise, the quality of honey
- More stable is, its liquids more inert,
- More tardy its flow; for all its stock of matter
- Cleaves more together, since, indeed, 'tis made
- Of atoms not so smooth, so fine, and round.
- For the light breeze that hovers yet can blow
- High heaps of poppy-seed away for thee
- Downward from off the top; but, contrariwise,
- A pile of stones or spiny ears of wheat
- It can't at all. Thus, in so far as bodies
- Are small and smooth, is their mobility;
- But, contrariwise, the heavier and more rough,
- The more immovable they prove. Now, then,
- Since nature of mind is movable so much,
- Consist it must of seeds exceeding small
- And smooth and round. Which fact once known to thee,
- Good friend, will serve thee opportune in else.
- This also shows the nature of the same,
- How nice its texture, in how small a space
- 'Twould go, if once compacted as a pellet:
- When death's unvexed repose gets hold on man
- And mind and soul retire, thou markest there
- From the whole body nothing ta'en in form,
- Nothing in weight. Death grants ye everything,
- But vital sense and exhalation hot.
- Thus soul entire must be of smallmost seeds,
- Twined through the veins, the vitals, and the thews,
- Seeing that, when 'tis from whole body gone,
- The outward figuration of the limbs
- Is unimpaired and weight fails not a whit.
- Just so, when vanished the bouquet of wine,
- Or when an unguent's perfume delicate
- Into the winds away departs, or when
- From any body savour's gone, yet still
- The thing itself seems minished naught to eyes,
- Thereby, nor aught abstracted from its weight-
- No marvel, because seeds many and minute
- Produce the savours and the redolence
- In the whole body of the things.
- And so,
- Again, again, nature of mind and soul
- 'Tis thine to know created is of seeds
- The tiniest ever, since at flying-forth
- It beareth nothing of the weight away.
- Yet fancy not its nature simple so.
- For an impalpable aura, mixed with heat,
- Deserts the dying, and heat draws off the air;
- And heat there's none, unless commixed with air:
- For, since the nature of all heat is rare,
- Athrough it many seeds of air must move.
- Thus nature of mind is triple; yet those all
- Suffice not for creating sense- since mind
- Accepteth not that aught of these can cause
- Sense-bearing motions, and much less the thoughts
- A man revolves in mind. So unto these
- Must added be a somewhat, and a fourth;
- That somewhat's altogether void of name;
- Than which existeth naught more mobile, naught
- More an impalpable, of elements
- More small and smooth and round. That first transmits
- Sense-bearing motions through the frame, for that
- Is roused the first, composed of little shapes;
- Thence heat and viewless force of wind take up
- The motions, and thence air, and thence all things
- Are put in motion; the blood is strook, and then
- The vitals all begin to feel, and last
- To bones and marrow the sensation comes-
- Pleasure or torment. Nor will pain for naught
- Enter so far, nor a sharp ill seep through,
- But all things be perturbed to that degree
- That room for life will fail, and parts of soul
- Will scatter through the body's every pore.
- Yet as a rule, almost upon the skin
- These motion aIl are stopped, and this is why
- We have the power to retain our life.
- Now in my eagerness to tell thee how
- They are commixed, through what unions fit
- They function so, my country's pauper-speech
- Constrains me sadly. As I can, however,
- I'll touch some points and pass.
- In such a wise
- Course these primordials 'mongst one another
- With inter-motions that no one can be
- From other sundered, nor its agency
- Perform, if once divided by a space;
- Like many powers in one body they work.
- As in the flesh of any creature still
- Is odour and savour and a certain warmth,
- And yet from all of these one bulk of body
- Is made complete, so, viewless force of wind
- And warmth and air, commingled, do create
- One nature, by that mobile energy
- Assisted which from out itself to them
- Imparts initial motion, whereby first
- Sense-bearing motion along the vitals springs.
- For lurks this essence far and deep and under,
- Nor in our body is aught more shut from view,
- And 'tis the very soul of all the soul.
- And as within our members and whole frame
- The energy of mind and power of soul
- Is mixed and latent, since create it is
- Of bodies small and few, so lurks this fourth,
- This essence void of name, composed of small,
- And seems the very soul of all the soul,
- And holds dominion o'er the body all.
- And by like reason wind and air and heat
- Must function so, commingled through the frame,
- And now the one subside and now another
- In interchange of dominance, that thus
- From all of them one nature be produced,
- Lest heat and wind apart, and air apart,
- Make sense to perish, by disseverment.
- There is indeed in mind that heat it gets
- When seething in rage, and flashes from the eyes
- More swiftly fire; there is, again, that wind,
- Much, and so cold, companion of all dread,
- Which rouses the shudder in the shaken frame;
- There is no less that state of air composed,
- Making the tranquil breast, the serene face.
- But more of hot have they whose restive hearts,
- Whose minds of passion quickly seethe in rage-
- Of which kind chief are fierce abounding lions,
- Who often with roaring burst the breast o'erwrought,
- Unable to hold the surging wrath within;
- But the cold mind of stags has more of wind,
- And speedier through their inwards rouses up
- The icy currents which make their members quake.
- But more the oxen live by tranquil air,
- Nor e'er doth smoky torch of wrath applied,
- O'erspreading with shadows of a darkling murk,
- Rouse them too far; nor will they stiffen stark,
- Pierced through by icy javelins of fear;
- But have their place half-way between the two-
- Stags and fierce lions. Thus the race of men:
- Though training make them equally refined,
- It leaves those pristine vestiges behind
- Of each mind's nature. Nor may we suppose
- Evil can e'er be rooted up so far
- That one man's not more given to fits of wrath,
- Another's not more quickly touched by fear,
- A third not more long-suffering than he should.
- And needs must differ in many things besides
- The varied natures and resulting habits
- Of humankind- of which not now can I
- Expound the hidden causes, nor find names
- Enough for all the divers shapes of those
- Primordials whence this variation springs.
- But this meseems I'm able to declare:
- Those vestiges of natures left behind
- Which reason cannot quite expel from us
- Are still so slight that naught prevents a man
- From living a life even worthy of the gods.
- So then this soul is kept by all the body,
- Itself the body's guard, and source of weal:
- For they with common roots cleave each to each,
- Nor can be torn asunder without death.
- Not easy 'tis from lumps of frankincense
- To tear their fragrance forth, without its nature
- Perishing likewise: so, not easy 'tis
- From all the body nature of mind and soul
- To draw away, without the whole dissolved.
- With seeds so intertwined even from birth,
- They're dowered conjointly with a partner-life;
- No energy of body or mind, apart,
- Each of itself without the other's power,
- Can have sensation; but our sense, enkindled
- Along the vitals, to flame is blown by both
- With mutual motions. Besides the body alone
- Is nor begot nor grows, nor after death
- Seen to endure. For not as water at times
- Gives off the alien heat, nor is thereby
- Itself destroyed, but unimpaired remains-
- Not thus, I say, can the deserted frame
- Bear the dissevering of its joined soul,
- But, rent and ruined, moulders all away.
- Thus the joint contact of the body and soul
- Learns from their earliest age the vital motions,
- Even when still buried in the mother's womb;
- So no dissevering can hap to them,
- Without their bane and ill. And thence mayst see
- That, as conjoined is their source of weal,
- Conjoined also must their nature be.
- If one, moreover, denies that body feel,
- And holds that soul, through all the body mixed,
- Takes on this motion which we title "sense,"
- He battles in vain indubitable facts:
- For who'll explain what body's feeling is,
- Except by what the public fact itself
- Has given and taught us? "But when soul is parted,
- Body's without all sense." True!- loses what
- Was even in its life-time not its own;
- And much beside it loses, when soul's driven
- Forth from that life-time. Or, to say that eyes
- Themselves can see no thing, but through the same
- The mind looks forth, as out of opened doors,
- Is- a hard saying; since the feel in eyes
- Says the reverse. For this itself draws on
- And forces into the pupils of our eyes
- Our consciousness. And note the case when often
- We lack the power to see refulgent things,
- Because our eyes are hampered by their light-
- With a mere doorway this would happen not;
- For, since it is our very selves that see,
- No open portals undertake the toil.
- Besides, if eyes of ours but act as doors,
- Methinks that, were our sight removed, the mind
- Ought then still better to behold a thing-
- When even the door-posts have been cleared away.
- Herein in these affairs nowise take up
- What honoured sage, Democritus, lays down-
- That proposition, that primordials
- Of body and mind, each super-posed on each,
- Vary alternately and interweave
- The fabric of our members. For not only
- Are the soul-elements smaller far than those
- Which this our body and inward parts compose,
- But also are they in their number less,
- And scattered sparsely through our frame. And thus
- This canst thou guarantee: soul's primal germs
- Maintain between them intervals as large
- At least as are the smallest bodies, which,
- When thrown against us, in our body rouse
- Sense-bearing motions.