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