De Rerum Natura
Lucretius
Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. William Ellery Leonard. E. P. Dutton. 1916.
- 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.
- Hence it comes that we
- Sometimes don't feel alighting on our frames
- The clinging dust, or chalk that settles soft;
- Nor mists of night, nor spider's gossamer
- We feel against us, when, upon our road,
- Its net entangles us, nor on our head
- The dropping of its withered garmentings;
- Nor bird-feathers, nor vegetable down,
- Flying about, so light they barely fall;
- Nor feel the steps of every crawling thing,
- Nor each of all those footprints on our skin
- Of midges and the like. To that degree
- Must many primal germs be stirred in us
- Ere once the seeds of soul that through our frame
- Are intermingled 'gin to feel that those
- Primordials of the body have been strook,
- And ere, in pounding with such gaps between,
- They clash, combine and leap apart in turn.
- But mind is more the keeper of the gates,
- Hath more dominion over life than soul.
- For without intellect and mind there's not
- One part of soul can rest within our frame
- Least part of time; companioning, it goes
- With mind into the winds away, and leaves
- The icy members in the cold of death.
- But he whose mind and intellect abide
- Himself abides in life. However much
- The trunk be mangled, with the limbs lopped off,
- The soul withdrawn and taken from the limbs,
- Still lives the trunk and draws the vital air.
- Even when deprived of all but all the soul,
- Yet will it linger on and cleave to life,-
- Just as the power of vision still is strong,
- If but the pupil shall abide unharmed,
- Even when the eye around it's sorely rent-
- Provided only thou destroyest not
- Wholly the ball, but, cutting round the pupil,
- Leavest that pupil by itself behind-
- For more would ruin sight. But if that centre,
- That tiny part of eye, be eaten through,
- Forthwith the vision fails and darkness comes,
- Though in all else the unblemished ball be clear.
- 'Tis by like compact that the soul and mind
- Are each to other bound forevermore.
- Now come: that thou mayst able be to know
- That minds and the light souls of all that live
- Have mortal birth and death, I will go on
- Verses to build meet for thy rule of life,
- Sought after long, discovered with sweet toil.
- But under one name I'd have thee yoke them both;
- And when, for instance, I shall speak of soul,
- Teaching the same to be but mortal, think
- Thereby I'm speaking also of the mind-
- Since both are one, a substance inter-joined.
- First, then, since I have taught how soul exists
- A subtle fabric, of particles minute,
- Made up from atoms smaller much than those
- Of water's liquid damp, or fog, or smoke,
- So in mobility it far excels,
- More prone to move, though strook by lighter cause
- Even moved by images of smoke or fog-
- As where we view, when in our sleeps we're lulled,
- The altars exhaling steam and smoke aloft-
- For, beyond doubt, these apparitions come
- To us from outward. Now, then, since thou seest,
- Their liquids depart, their waters flow away,
- When jars are shivered, and since fog and smoke
- Depart into the winds away, believe
- The soul no less is shed abroad and dies
- More quickly far, more quickly is dissolved
- Back to its primal bodies, when withdrawn
- From out man's members it has gone away.
- For, sure, if body (container of the same
- Like as a jar), when shivered from some cause,
- And rarefied by loss of blood from veins,
- Cannot for longer hold the soul, how then
- Thinkst thou it can be held by any air-
- A stuff much rarer than our bodies be?
- Besides we feel that mind to being comes
- Along with body, with body grows and ages.
- For just as children totter round about
- With frames infirm and tender, so there follows
- A weakling wisdom in their minds; and then,
- Where years have ripened into robust powers,
- Counsel is also greater, more increased
- The power of mind; thereafter, where already
- The body's shattered by master-powers of eld,
- And fallen the frame with its enfeebled powers,
- Thought hobbles, tongue wanders, and the mind gives way;
- All fails, all's lacking at the selfsame time.
- Therefore it suits that even the soul's dissolved,
- Like smoke, into the lofty winds of air;
- Since we behold the same to being come
- Along with body and grow, and, as I've taught,
- Crumble and crack, therewith outworn by eld.
- Then, too, we see, that, just as body takes
- Monstrous diseases and the dreadful pain,
- So mind its bitter cares, the grief, the fear;
- Wherefore it tallies that the mind no less
- Partaker is of death; for pain and disease
- Are both artificers of death,- as well
- We've learned by the passing of many a man ere now.
- Nay, too, in diseases of body, often the mind
- Wanders afield; for 'tis beside itself,
- And crazed it speaks, or many a time it sinks,
- With eyelids closing and a drooping nod,
- In heavy drowse, on to eternal sleep;
- From whence nor hears it any voices more,
- Nor able is to know the faces here
- Of those about him standing with wet cheeks
- Who vainly call him back to light and life.
- Wherefore mind too, confess we must, dissolves,
- Seeing, indeed, contagions of disease
- Enter into the same. Again, O why,
- When the strong wine has entered into man,
- And its diffused fire gone round the veins,
- Why follows then a heaviness of limbs,
- A tangle of the legs as round he reels,
- A stuttering tongue, an intellect besoaked,
- Eyes all aswim, and hiccups, shouts, and brawls,
- And whatso else is of that ilk?- Why this?-
- If not that violent and impetuous wine
- Is wont to confound the soul within the body?
- But whatso can confounded be and balked,
- Gives proof, that if a hardier cause got in,
- 'Twould hap that it would perish then, bereaved
- Of any life thereafter.
- And, moreover,
- Often will some one in a sudden fit,
- As if by stroke of lightning, tumble down
- Before our eyes, and sputter foam, and grunt,
- Blither, and twist about with sinews taut,
- Gasp up in starts, and weary out his limbs
- With tossing round. No marvel, since distract
- Through frame by violence of disease.
- . . . . . .
- Confounds, he foams, as if to vomit soul,
- As on the salt sea boil the billows round
- Under the master might of winds. And now
- A groan's forced out, because his limbs are griped,
- But, in the main, because the seeds of voice
- Are driven forth and carried in a mass
- Outwards by mouth, where they are wont to go,
- And have a builded highway. He becomes
- Mere fool, since energy of mind and soul
- Confounded is, and, as I've shown, to-riven,
- Asunder thrown, and torn to pieces all
- By the same venom. But, again, where cause
- Of that disease has faced about, and back
- Retreats sharp poison of corrupted frame
- Into its shadowy lairs, the man at first
- Arises reeling, and gradually comes back
- To all his senses and recovers soul.
- Thus, since within the body itself of man
- The mind and soul are by such great diseases
- Shaken, so miserably in labour distraught,
- Why, then, believe that in the open air,
- Without a body, they can pass their life,
- Immortal, battling with the master winds?
- And, since we mark the mind itself is cured,
- Like the sick body, and restored can be
- By medicine, this is forewarning too
- That mortal lives the mind. For proper it is
- That whosoe'er begins and undertakes
- To alter the mind, or meditates to change
- Any another nature soever, should add
- New parts, or readjust the order given,
- Or from the sum remove at least a bit.
- But what's immortal willeth for itself
- Its parts be nor increased, nor rearranged,
- Nor any bit soever flow away:
- For change of anything from out its bounds
- Means instant death of that which was before.
- Ergo, the mind, whether in sickness fallen,
- Or by the medicine restored, gives signs,
- As I have taught, of its mortality.
- So surely will a fact of truth make head
- 'Gainst errors' theories all, and so shut off
- All refuge from the adversary, and rout
- Error by two-edged confutation.
- And since the mind is of a man one part,
- Which in one fixed place remains, like ears,
- And eyes, and every sense which pilots life;
- And just as hand, or eye, or nose, apart,
- Severed from us, can neither feel nor be,
- But in the least of time is left to rot,
- Thus mind alone can never be, without
- The body and the man himself, which seems,
- As 'twere the vessel of the same- or aught
- Whate'er thou'lt feign as yet more closely joined:
- Since body cleaves to mind by surest bonds.
- Again, the body's and the mind's live powers
- Only in union prosper and enjoy;
- For neither can nature of mind, alone of self
- Sans body, give the vital motions forth;
- Nor, then, can body, wanting soul, endure
- And use the senses. Verily, as the eye,
- Alone, up-rended from its roots, apart
- From all the body, can peer about at naught,
- So soul and mind it seems are nothing able,
- When by themselves. No marvel, because, commixed
- Through veins and inwards, and through bones and thews,
- Their elements primordial are confined
- By all the body, and own no power free
- To bound around through interspaces big,
- Thus, shut within these confines, they take on
- Motions of sense, which, after death, thrown out
- Beyond the body to the winds of air,
- Take on they cannot- and on this account,
- Because no more in such a way confined.
- For air will be a body, be alive,
- If in that air the soul can keep itself,
- And in that air enclose those motions all
- Which in the thews and in the body itself
- A while ago 'twas making. So for this,
- Again, again, I say confess we must,
- That, when the body's wrappings are unwound,
- And when the vital breath is forced without,
- The soul, the senses of the mind dissolve,-
- Since for the twain the cause and ground of life
- Is in the fact of their conjoined estate.
- Once more, since body's unable to sustain
- Division from the soul, without decay
- And obscene stench, how canst thou doubt but that
- The soul, uprisen from the body's deeps,
- Has filtered away, wide-drifted like a smoke,
- Or that the changed body crumbling fell
- With ruin so entire, because, indeed,
- Its deep foundations have been moved from place,
- The soul out-filtering even through the frame,
- And through the body's every winding way
- And orifice? And so by many means
- Thou'rt free to learn that nature of the soul
- Hath passed in fragments out along the frame,
- And that 'twas shivered in the very body
- Ere ever it slipped abroad and swam away
- Into the winds of air.
- For never a man
- Dying appears to feel the soul go forth
- As one sure whole from all his body at once,
- Nor first come up the throat and into mouth;
- But feels it failing in a certain spot,
- Even as he knows the senses too dissolve
- Each in its own location in the frame.
- But were this mind of ours immortal mind,
- Dying 'twould scarce bewail a dissolution,
- But rather the going, the leaving of its coat,
- Like to a snake. Wherefore, when once the body
- Hath passed away, admit we must that soul,
- Shivered in all that body, perished too.
- Nay, even when moving in the bounds of life,
- Often the soul, now tottering from some cause,
- Craves to go out, and from the frame entire
- Loosened to be; the countenance becomes
- Flaccid, as if the supreme hour were there;
- And flabbily collapse the members all
- Against the bloodless trunk- the kind of case
- We see when we remark in common phrase,
- "That man's quite gone," or "fainted dead away";
- And where there's now a bustle of alarm,
- And all are eager to get some hold upon
- The man's last link of life. For then the mind
- And all the power of soul are shook so sore,
- And these so totter along with all the frame,
- That any cause a little stronger might
- Dissolve them altogether.- Why, then, doubt
- That soul, when once without the body thrust,
- There in the open, an enfeebled thing,
- Its wrappings stripped away, cannot endure
- Not only through no everlasting age,
- But even, indeed, through not the least of time?
- Then, too, why never is the intellect,
- The counselling mind, begotten in the head,
- The feet, the hands, instead of cleaving still
- To one sole seat, to one fixed haunt, the breast,
- If not that fixed places be assigned
- For each thing's birth, where each, when 'tis create,
- Is able to endure, and that our frames
- Have such complex adjustments that no shift
- In order of our members may appear?
- To that degree effect succeeds to cause,
- Nor is the flame once wont to be create
- In flowing streams, nor cold begot in fire.
- Besides, if nature of soul immortal be,
- And able to feel, when from our frame disjoined,
- The same, I fancy, must be thought to be
- Endowed with senses five,- nor is there way
- But this whereby to image to ourselves
- How under-souls may roam in Acheron.
- Thus painters and the elder race of bards
- Have pictured souls with senses so endowed.
- But neither eyes, nor nose, nor hand, alone
- Apart from body can exist for soul,
- Nor tongue nor ears apart. And hence indeed
- Alone by self they can nor feel nor be.
- And since we mark the vital sense to be
- In the whole body, all one living thing,
- If of a sudden a force with rapid stroke
- Should slice it down the middle and cleave in twain,
- Beyond a doubt likewise the soul itself,
- Divided, dissevered, asunder will be flung
- Along with body. But what severed is
- And into sundry parts divides, indeed
- Admits it owns no everlasting nature.
- We hear how chariots of war, areek
- With hurly slaughter, lop with flashing scythes
- The limbs away so suddenly that there,
- Fallen from the trunk, they quiver on the earth,
- The while the mind and powers of the man
- Can feel no pain, for swiftness of his hurt,
- And sheer abandon in the zest of battle:
- With the remainder of his frame he seeks
- Anew the battle and the slaughter, nor marks
- How the swift wheels and scythes of ravin have dragged
- Off with the horses his left arm and shield;
- Nor other how his right has dropped away,
- Mounting again and on. A third attempts
- With leg dismembered to arise and stand,
- Whilst, on the ground hard by, the dying foot
- Twitches its spreading toes. And even the head,
- When from the warm and living trunk lopped off,
- Keeps on the ground the vital countenance
- And open eyes, until 't has rendered up
- All remnants of the soul. Nay, once again:
- If, when a serpent's darting forth its tongue,
- And lashing its tail, thou gettest chance to hew
- With axe its length of trunk to many parts,
- Thou'lt see each severed fragment writhing round
- With its fresh wound, and spattering up the sod,
- And there the fore-part seeking with the jaws
- After the hinder, with bite to stop the pain.
- So shall we say that these be souls entire
- In all those fractions?- but from that 'twould follow
- One creature'd have in body many souls.
- Therefore, the soul, which was indeed but one,
- Has been divided with the body too:
- Each is but mortal, since alike is each
- Hewn into many parts. Again, how often
- We view our fellow going by degrees,
- And losing limb by limb the vital sense;
- First nails and fingers of the feet turn blue,
- Next die the feet and legs, then o'er the rest
- Slow crawl the certain footsteps of cold death.
- And since this nature of the soul is torn,
- Nor mounts away, as at one time, entire,
- We needs must hold it mortal. But perchance
- If thou supposest that the soul itself
- Can inward draw along the frame, and bring
- Its parts together to one place, and so
- From all the members draw the sense away,
- Why, then, that place in which such stock of soul
- Collected is, should greater seem in sense.
- But since such place is nowhere, for a fact,
- As said before, 'tis rent and scattered forth,
- And so goes under. Or again, if now
- I please to grant the false, and say that soul
- Can thus be lumped within the frames of those
- Who leave the sunshine, dying bit by bit,
- Still must the soul as mortal be confessed;
- Nor aught it matters whether to wrack it go,
- Dispersed in the winds, or, gathered in a mass
- From all its parts, sink down to brutish death,
- Since more and more in every region sense
- Fails the whole man, and less and less of life
- In every region lingers.
- And besides,
- If soul immortal is, and winds its way
- Into the body at the birth of man,
- Why can we not remember something, then,
- Of life-time spent before? why keep we not
- Some footprints of the things we did of, old?
- But if so changed hath been the power of mind,
- That every recollection of things done
- Is fallen away, at no o'erlong remove
- Is that, I trow, from what we mean by death.
- Wherefore 'tis sure that what hath been before
- Hath died, and what now is is now create.
- Moreover, if after the body hath been built
- Our mind's live powers are wont to be put in,
- Just at the moment that we come to birth,
- And cross the sills of life, 'twould scarcely fit
- For them to live as if they seemed to grow
- Along with limbs and frame, even in the blood,
- But rather as in a cavern all alone.
- (Yet all the body duly throngs with sense.)
- But public fact declares against all this:
- For soul is so entwined through the veins,
- The flesh, the thews, the bones, that even the teeth
- Share in sensation, as proven by dull ache,
- By twinge from icy water, or grating crunch
- Upon a stone that got in mouth with bread.
- Wherefore, again, again, souls must be thought
- Nor void of birth, nor free from law of death;
- Nor, if, from outward, in they wound their way,
- Could they be thought as able so to cleave
- To these our frames, nor, since so interwove,
- Appears it that they're able to go forth
- Unhurt and whole and loose themselves unscathed
- From all the thews, articulations, bones.
- But, if perchance thou thinkest that the soul,
- From outward winding in its way, is wont
- To seep and soak along these members ours,
- Then all the more 'twill perish, being thus
- With body fused- for what will seep and soak
- Will be dissolved and will therefore die.
- For just as food, dispersed through all the pores
- Of body, and passed through limbs and all the frame,
- Perishes, supplying from itself the stuff
- For other nature, thus the soul and mind,
- Though whole and new into a body going,
- Are yet, by seeping in, dissolved away,
- Whilst, as through pores, to all the frame there pass
- Those particles from which created is
- This nature of mind, now ruler of our body,
- Born from that soul which perished, when divided
- Along the frame.
- Wherefore it seems that soul
- Hath both a natal and funeral hour.
- Besides are seeds of soul there left behind
- In the breathless body, or not? If there they are,
- It cannot justly be immortal deemed,
- Since, shorn of some parts lost, 'thas gone away:
- But if, borne off with members uncorrupt,
- 'Thas fled so absolutely all away
- It leaves not one remainder of itself
- Behind in body, whence do cadavers, then,
- From out their putrid flesh exhale the worms,
- And whence does such a mass of living things,
- Boneless and bloodless, o'er the bloated frame
- Bubble and swarm? But if perchance thou thinkest
- That souls from outward into worms can wind,
- And each into a separate body come,
- And reckonest not why many thousand souls
- Collect where only one has gone away,
- Here is a point, in sooth, that seems to need
- Inquiry and a putting to the test:
- Whether the souls go on a hunt for seeds
- Of worms wherewith to build their dwelling places,
- Or enter bodies ready-made, as 'twere.
- But why themselves they thus should do and toil
- 'Tis hard to say, since, being free of body,
- They flit around, harassed by no disease,
- Nor cold nor famine; for the body labours
- By more of kinship to these flaws of life,
- And mind by contact with that body suffers
- So many ills. But grant it be for them
- However useful to construct a body
- To which to enter in, 'tis plain they can't.
- Then, souls for self no frames nor bodies make,
- Nor is there how they once might enter in
- To bodies ready-made- for they cannot
- Be nicely interwoven with the same,
- And there'll be formed no interplay of sense
- Common to each.
- Again, why is't there goes
- Impetuous rage with lion's breed morose,
- And cunning with foxes, and to deer why given
- The ancestral fear and tendency to flee,
- And why in short do all the rest of traits
- Engender from the very start of life
- In the members and mentality, if not
- Because one certain power of mind that came
- From its own seed and breed waxes the same
- Along with all the body? But were mind
- Immortal, were it wont to change its bodies,
- How topsy-turvy would earth's creatures act!
- The Hyrcan hound would flee the onset oft
- Of antlered stag, the scurrying hawk would quake
- Along the winds of air at the coming dove,
- And men would dote, and savage beasts be wise;
- For false the reasoning of those that say
- Immortal mind is changed by change of body-
- For what is changed dissolves, and therefore dies.
- For parts are re-disposed and leave their order;
- Wherefore they must be also capable
- Of dissolution through the frame at last,
- That they along with body perish all.
- But should some say that always souls of men
- Go into human bodies, I will ask:
- How can a wise become a dullard soul?
- And why is never a child's a prudent soul?
- And the mare's filly why not trained so well
- As sturdy strength of steed? We may be sure
- They'll take their refuge in the thought that mind
- Becomes a weakling in a weakling frame.
- Yet be this so, 'tis needful to confess
- The soul but mortal, since, so altered now
- Throughout the frame, it loses the life and sense
- It had before. Or how can mind wax strong
- Coequally with body and attain
- The craved flower of life, unless it be
- The body's colleague in its origins?
- Or what's the purport of its going forth
- From aged limbs?- fears it, perhaps, to stay,
- Pent in a crumbled body? Or lest its house,
- Outworn by venerable length of days,
- May topple down upon it? But indeed
- For an immortal perils are there none.
- Again, at parturitions of the wild
- And at the rites of Love, that souls should stand
- Ready hard by seems ludicrous enough-
- Immortals waiting for their mortal limbs
- In numbers innumerable, contending madly
- Which shall be first and chief to enter in!-
- Unless perchance among the souls there be
- Such treaties stablished that the first to come
- Flying along, shall enter in the first,
- And that they make no rivalries of strength!
- Again, in ether can't exist a tree,
- Nor clouds in ocean deeps, nor in the fields
- Can fishes live, nor blood in timber be,
- Nor sap in boulders: fixed and arranged
- Where everything may grow and have its place.
- Thus nature of mind cannot arise alone
- Without the body, nor exist afar
- From thews and blood. But if 'twere possible,
- Much rather might this very power of mind
- Be in the head, the shoulders or the heels,
- And, born in any part soever, yet
- In the same man, in the same vessel abide.
- But since within this body even of ours
- Stands fixed and appears arranged sure
- Where soul and mind can each exist and grow,
- Deny we must the more that they can have
- Duration and birth, wholly outside the frame.
- For, verily, the mortal to conjoin
- With the eternal, and to feign they feel
- Together, and can function each with each,
- Is but to dote: for what can be conceived
- Of more unlike, discrepant, ill-assorted,
- Than something mortal in a union joined
- With an immortal and a secular
- To bear the outrageous tempests?
- Then, again,
- Whatever abides eternal must indeed
- Either repel all strokes, because 'tis made
- Of solid body, and permit no entrance
- Of aught with power to sunder from within
- The parts compact- as are those seeds of stuff
- Whose nature we've exhibited before;
- Or else be able to endure through time
- For this: because they are from blows exempt,
- As is the void, the which abides untouched,
- Unsmit by any stroke; or else because
- There is no room around, whereto things can,
- As 'twere, depart in dissolution all,-
- Even as the sum of sums eternal is,
- Without or place beyond whereto things may
- Asunder fly, or bodies which can smite,
- And thus dissolve them by the blows of might.