Delphi Complete Works of Lucretius

by Titus Lucretius Carus

  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.

  THE SOUL IS MORTAL

  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,