De Rerum Natura
Lucretius
Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. William Ellery Leonard. E. P. Dutton. 1916.
- 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.