<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=450290" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Book III - Part 03 - The Soul is Mortal</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now come: that thou mayst able be to know <br>That minds and the light souls of all that live <br>Have mortal birth and death, I will go on <br>Verses to build meet for thy rule of life, <br>Sought after long, discovered with sweet toil. <br>But under one name I'd have thee yoke them both; <br>And when, for instance, I shall speak of soul, <br>Teaching the same to be but mortal, think <br>Thereby I'm speaking also of the mind- <br>Since both are one, a substance interjoined. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">First, then, since I have taught how soul exists <br>A subtle fabric, of particles minute, <br>Made up from atoms smaller much than those <br>Of water's liquid damp, or fog, or smoke, <br>So in mobility it far excels, <br>More prone to move, though strook by lighter cause <br>Even moved by images of smoke or fog- <br>As where we view, when in our sleeps we're lulled, <br>The altars exhaling steam and smoke aloft- <br>For, beyond doubt, these apparitions come <br>To us from outward. Now, then, since thou seest, <br>Their liquids depart, their waters flow away, <br>When jars are shivered, and since fog and smoke <br>Depart into the winds away, believe <br>The soul no less is shed abroad and dies <br>More quickly far, more quickly is dissolved <br>Back to its primal bodies, when withdrawn <br>From out man's members it has gone away. <br>For, sure, if body (container of the same <br>Like as a jar), when shivered from some cause, <br>And rarefied by loss of blood from veins, <br>Cannot for longer hold the soul, how then <br>Thinkst thou it can be held by any air- <br>A stuff much rarer than our bodies be? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Besides we feel that mind to being comes <br>Along with body, with body grows and ages. <br>For just as children totter round about <br>With frames infirm and tender, so there follows <br>A weakling wisdom in their minds; and then, <br>Where years have ripened into robust powers, <br>Counsel is also greater, more increased <br>The power of mind; thereafter, where already <br>The body's shattered by master-powers of eld, <br>And fallen the frame with its enfeebled powers, <br>Thought hobbles, tongue wanders, and the mind gives way; <br>All fails, all's lacking at the selfsame time. <br>Therefore it suits that even the soul's dissolved, <br>Like smoke, into the lofty winds of air; <br>Since we behold the same to being come <br>Along with body and grow, and, as I've taught, <br>Crumble and crack, therewith outworn by eld. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then, too, we see, that, just as body takes <br>Monstrous diseases and the dreadful pain, <br>So mind its bitter cares, the grief, the fear; <br>Wherefore it tallies that the mind no less <br>Partaker is of death; for pain and disease <br>Are both artificers of death,- as well <br>We've learned by the passing of many a man ere now. <br>Nay, too, in diseases of body, often the mind <br>Wanders afield; for 'tis beside itself, <br>And crazed it speaks, or many a time it sinks, <br>With eyelids closing and a drooping nod, <br>In heavy drowse, on to eternal sleep; <br>From whence nor hears it any voices more, <br>Nor able is to know the faces here <br>Of those about him standing with wet cheeks <br>Who vainly call him back to light and life. <br>Wherefore mind too, confess we must, dissolves, <br>Seeing, indeed, contagions of disease <br>Enter into the same. Again, O why, <br>When the strong wine has entered into man, <br>And its diffused fire gone round the veins, <br>Why follows then a heaviness of limbs, <br>A tangle of the legs as round he reels, <br>A stuttering tongue, an intellect besoaked, <br>Eyes all aswim, and hiccups, shouts, and brawls <br>And whatso else is of that ilk?- Why this?- <br>If not that violent and impetuous wine <br>Is wont to confound the soul within the body? <br>But whatso can confounded be and balked, <br>Gives proof, that if a hardier cause got in, <br>'Twould hap that it would perish then, bereaved <br>Of any life thereafter. And, moreover, <br>Often will some one in a sudden fit, <br>As if by stroke of lightning, tumble down <br>Before our eyes, and sputter foam, and grunt, <br>Blither, and twist about with sinews taut, <br>Gasp up in starts, and weary out his limbs <br>With tossing round. No marvel, since distract <br>Through frame by violence of disease. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Confounds, he foams, as if to vomit soul, <br>As on the salt sea boil the billows round <br>Under the master might of winds. And now <br>A groan's forced out, because his limbs are griped <br>But, in the main, because the seeds of voice <br>Are driven forth and carried in a mass <br>Outwards by mouth, where they are wont to go, <br>And have a builded highway. He becomes <br>Mere fool, since energy of mind and soul <br>Confounded is, and, as I've shown, to-riven, <br>Asunder thrown, and torn to pieces all <br>By the same venom. But, again, where cause <br>Of that disease has faced about, and back <br>Retreats sharp poison of corrupted frame <br>Into its shadowy lairs, the man at first <br>Arises reeling, and gradually comes back <br>To all his senses and recovers soul. <br>Thus, since within the body itself of man <br>The mind and soul are by such great diseases <br>Shaken, so miserably in labour distraught, <br>Why, then, believe that in the open air, <br>Without a body, they can pass their life, <br>Immortal, battling with the master winds? <br>And, since we mark the mind itself is cured, <br>Like the sick body, and restored can be <br>By medicine, this is forewarning to <br>That mortal lives the mind. For proper it is <br>That whosoe'er begins and undertakes <br>To alter the mind, or meditates to change <br>Any another nature soever, should add <br>New parts, or readjust the order given, <br>Or from the sum remove at least a bit. <br>But what's immortal willeth for itself <br>Its parts be nor increased, nor rearranged, <br>Nor any bit soever flow away: <br>For change of anything from out its bounds <br>Means instant death of that which was before. <br>Ergo, the mind, whether in sickness fallen, <br>Or by the medicine restored, gives signs, <br>As I have taught, of its mortality. <br>So surely will a fact of truth make head <br>'Gainst errors' theories all, and so shut off <br>All refuge from the adversary, and rout <br>Error by two-edged confutation. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And since the mind is of a man one part, <br>Which in one fixed place remains, like ears, <br>And eyes, and every sense which pilots life; <br>And just as hand, or eye, or nose, apart, <br>Severed from us, can neither feel nor be, <br>But in the least of time is left to rot, <br>Thus mind alone can never be, without <br>The body and the man himself, which seems, <br>As 'twere the vessel of the same- or aught <br>Whate'er thou'lt feign as yet more closely joined: <br>Since body cleaves to mind by surest bonds. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Again, the body's and the mind's live powers <br>Only in union prosper and enjoy; <br>For neither can nature of mind, alone of itself <br>Sans body, give the vital motions forth; <br>Nor, then, can body, wanting soul, endure <br>And use the senses. Verily, as the eye, <br>Alone, up-rended from its roots, apart <br>From all the body, can peer about at naught, <br>So soul and mind it seems are nothing able, <br>When by themselves. No marvel, because, commixed <br>Through veins and inwards, and through bones and thews, <br>Their elements primordial are confined <br>By all the body, and own no power free <br>To bound around through interspaces big, <br>Thus, shut within these confines, they take on <br>Motions of sense, which, after death, thrown out <br>Beyond the body to the winds of air, <br>Take on they cannot- and on this account, <br>Because no more in such a way confined. <br>For air will be a body, be alive, <br>If in that air the soul can keep itself, <br>And in that air enclose those motions all <br>Which in the thews and in the body itself <br>A while ago 'twas making. So for this, <br>Again, again, I say confess we must, <br>That, when the body's wrappings are unwound, <br>And when the vital breath is forced without, <br>The soul, the senses of the mind dissolve,- <br>Since for the twain the cause and ground of life <br>Is in the fact of their conjoined estate. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Once more, since body's unable to sustain <br>Division from the soul, without decay <br>And obscene stench, how canst thou doubt but that <br>The soul, uprisen from the body's deeps, <br>Has filtered away, wide-drifted like a smoke, <br>Or that the changed body crumbling fell <br>With ruin so entire, because, indeed, <br>Its deep foundations have been moved from place, <br>The soul out-filtering even through the frame, <br>And through the body's every winding way <br>And orifice? And so by many means <br>Thou'rt free to learn that nature of the soul <br>Hath passed in fragments out along the frame, <br>And that 'twas shivered in the very body <br>Ere ever it slipped abroad and swam away <br>Into the winds of air. For never a man <br>Dying appears to feel the soul go forth <br>As one sure whole from all his body at once, <br>Nor first come up the throat and into mouth; <br>But feels it failing in a certain spot, <br>Even as he knows the senses too dissolve <br>Each in its own location in the frame. <br>But were this mind of ours immortal mind, <br>Dying 'twould scarce bewail a dissolution, <br>But rather the going, the leaving of its coat, <br>Like to a snake. Wherefore, when once the body <br>Hath passed away, admit we must that soul, <br>Shivered in all that body, perished too. <br>Nay, even when moving in the bounds of life, <br>Often the soul, now tottering from some cause, <br>Craves to go out, and from the frame entire <br>Loosened to be; the countenance becomes <br>Flaccid, as if the supreme hour were there; <br>And flabbily collapse the members all <br>Against the bloodless trunk- the kind of case <br>We see when we remark in common phrase, <br>&quot;That man's quite gone,&quot; or &quot;fainted dead away&quot;; <br>And where there's now a bustle of alarm, <br>And all are eager to get some hold upon <br>The man's last link of life. For then the mind <br>And all the power of soul are shook so sore, <br>And these so totter along with all the frame, <br>That any cause a little stronger might <br>Dissolve them altogether.- Why, then, doubt <br>That soul, when once without the body thrust, <br>There in the open, an enfeebled thing, <br>Its wrappings stripped away, cannot endure <br>Not only through no everlasting age, <br>But even, indeed, through not the least of time? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then, too, why never is the intellect, <br>The counselling mind, begotten in the head, <br>The feet, the hands, instead of cleaving still <br>To one sole seat, to one fixed haunt, the breast, <br>If not that fixed places be assigned <br>For each thing's birth, where each, when 'tis create, <br>Is able to endure, and that our frames <br>Have such complex adjustments that no shift <br>In order of our members may appear? <br>To that degree effect succeeds to cause, <br>Nor is the flame once wont to be create <br>In flowing streams, nor cold begot in fire. <br>Besides, if nature of soul immortal be, <br>And able to feel, when from our frame disjoined, <br>The same, I fancy, must be thought to be <br>Endowed with senses five,- nor is there way <br>But this whereby to image to ourselves <br>How under-souls may roam in Acheron. <br>Thus painters and the elder race of bards <br>Have pictured souls with senses so endowed. <br>But neither eyes, nor nose, nor hand, alone <br>Apart from body can exist for soul, <br>Nor tongue nor ears apart. And hence indeed <br>Alone by self they can nor feel nor be. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And since we mark the vital sense to be <br>In the whole body, all one living thing, <br>If of a sudden a force with rapid stroke <br>Should slice it down the middle and cleave in twain, <br>Beyond a doubt likewise the soul itself, <br>Divided, dissevered, asunder will be flung <br>Along with body. But what severed is <br>And into sundry parts divides, indeed <br>Admits it owns no everlasting nature. <br>We hear how chariots of war, areek <br>With hurly slaughter, lop with flashing scythes <br>The limbs away so suddenly that there, <br>Fallen from the trunk, they quiver on the earth, <br>The while the mind and powers of the man <br>Can feel no pain, for swiftness of his hurt, <br>And sheer abandon in the zest of battle: <br>With the remainder of his frame he seeks <br>Anew the battle and the slaughter, nor marks <br>How the swift wheels and scythes of ravin have dragged <br>Off with the horses his left arm and shield; <br>Nor other how his right has dropped away, <br>Mounting again and on. A third attempts <br>With leg dismembered to arise and stand, <br>Whilst, on the ground hard by, the dying foot <br>Twitches its spreading toes. And even the head, <br>When from the warm and living trunk lopped off, <br>Keeps on the ground the vital countenance <br>And open eyes, until 't has rendered up <br>All remnants of the soul. Nay, once again: <br>If, when a serpent's darting forth its tongue, <br>And lashing its tail, thou gettest chance to hew <br>With axe its length of trunk to many parts, <br>Thou'lt see each severed fragment writhing round <br>With its fresh wound, and spattering up the sod, <br>And there the fore-part seeking with the jaws <br>After the hinder, with bite to stop the pain. <br>So shall we say that these be souls entire <br>In all those fractions?- but from that 'twould follow <br>One creature'd have in body many souls. <br>Therefore, the soul, which was indeed but one, <br>Has been divided with the body too: <br>Each is but mortal, since alike is each <br>Hewn into many parts. Again, how often <br>We view our fellow going by degrees, <br>And losing limb by limb the vital sense; <br>First nails and fingers of the feet turn blue, <br>Next die the feet and legs, then o'er the rest <br>Slow crawl the certain footsteps of cold death. <br>And since this nature of the soul is torn, <br>Nor mounts away, as at one time, entire, <br>We needs must hold it mortal. But perchance <br>If thou supposest that the soul itself <br>Can inward draw along the frame, and bring <br>Its parts together to one place, and so <br>From all the members draw the sense away, <br>Why, then, that place in which such stock of soul <br>Collected is, should greater seem in sense. <br>But since such place is nowhere, for a fact, <br>As said before, 'tis rent and scattered forth, <br>And so goes under. Or again, if now <br>I please to grant the false, and say that soul <br>Can thus be lumped within the frames of those <br>Who leave the sunshine, dying bit by bit, <br>Still must the soul as mortal be confessed; <br>Nor aught it matters whether to wrack it go, <br>Dispersed in the winds, or, gathered in a mass <br>From all its parts, sink down to brutish death, <br>Since more and more in every region sense <br>Fails the whole man, and less and less of life <br>In every region lingers. <br>And besides, <br>If soul immortal is, and winds its way <br>Into the body at the birth of man, <br>Why can we not remember something, then, <br>Of life-time spent before? why keep we not <br>Some footprints of the things we did of, old? <br>But if so changed hath been the power of mind, <br>That every recollection of things done <br>Is fallen away, at no o'erlong remove <br>Is that, I trow, from what we mean by death. <br>Wherefore 'tis sure that what hath been before <br>Hath died, and what now is is now create. <br>Moreover, if after the body hath been built <br>Our mind's live powers are wont to be put in, <br>Just at the moment that we come to birth, <br>And cross the sills of life, 'twould scarcely fit <br>For them to live as if they seemed to grow <br>Along with limbs and frame, even in the blood, <br>But rather as in a cavern all alone. <br>(Yet all the body duly throngs with sense.) <br>But public fact declares against all this: <br>For soul is so entwined through the veins, <br>The flesh, the thews, the bones, that even the teeth <br>Share in sensation, as proven by dull ache, <br>By twinge from icy water, or grating crunch <br>Upon a stone that got in mouth with bread. <br>Wherefore, again, again, souls must be thought <br>Nor void of birth, nor free from law of death; <br>Nor, if, from outward, in they wound their way, <br>Could they be thought as able so to cleave <br>To these our frames, nor, since so interwove, <br>Appears it that they're able to go forth <br>Unhurt and whole and loose themselves unscathed <br>From all the thews, articulations, bones. <br>But, if perchance thou thinkest that the soul, <br>From outward winding in its way, is wont <br>To seep and soak along these members ours, <br>Then all the more 'twill perish, being thus <br>With body fused- for what will seep and soak <br>Will be dissolved and will therefore die. <br>For just as food, dispersed through all the pores <br>Of body, and passed through limbs and all the frame, <br>Perishes, supplying from itself the stuff <br>For other nature, thus the soul and mind, <br>Though whole and new into a body going, <br>Are yet, by seeping in, dissolved away, <br>Whilst, as through pores, to all the frame there pass <br>Those particles from which created is <br>This nature of mind, now ruler of our body, <br>Born from that soul which perished, when divided <br>Along the frame. Wherefore it seems that soul <br>Hath both a natal and funeral hour. <br>Besides are seeds of soul there left behind <br>In the breathless body, or not? If there they are, <br>It cannot justly be immortal deemed, <br>Since, shorn of some parts lost, 'thas gone away: <br>But if, borne off with members uncorrupt, <br>'Thas fled so absolutely all away <br>It leaves not one remainder of itself <br>Behind in body, whence do cadavers, then, <br>From out their putrid flesh exhale the worms, <br>And whence does such a mass of living things, <br>Boneless and bloodless, o'er the bloated frame <br>Bubble and swarm? But if perchance thou thinkest <br>That souls from outward into worms can wind, <br>And each into a separate body come, <br>And reckonest not why many thousand souls <br>Collect where only one has gone away, <br>Here is a point, in sooth, that seems to need <br>Inquiry and a putting to the test: <br>Whether the souls go on a hunt for seeds <br>Of worms wherewith to build their dwelling places, <br>Or enter bodies ready-made, as 'twere. <br>But why themselves they thus should do and toil <br>'Tis hard to say, since, being free of body, <br>They flit around, harassed by no disease, <br>Nor cold nor famine; for the body labours <br>By more of kinship to these flaws of life, <br>And mind by contact with that body suffers <br>So many ills. But grant it be for them <br>However useful to construct a body <br>To which to enter in, 'tis plain they can't. <br>Then, souls for self no frames nor bodies make, <br>Nor is there how they once might enter in <br>To bodies ready-made- for they cannot <br>Be nicely interwoven with the same, <br>And there'll be formed no interplay of sense <br>Common to each. <br>Again, why is't there goes <br>Impetuous rage with lion's breed morose, <br>And cunning with foxes, and to deer why given <br>The ancestral fear and tendency to flee, <br>And why in short do all the rest of traits <br>Engender from the very start of life <br>In the members and mentality, if not <br>Because one certain power of mind that came <br>From its own seed and breed waxes the same <br>Along with all the body? But were mind <br>Immortal, were it wont to change its bodies, <br>How topsy-turvy would earth's creatures act! <br>The Hyrcan hound would flee the onset oft <br>Of antlered stag, the scurrying hawk would quake <br>Along the winds of air at the coming dove, <br>And men would dote, and savage beasts be wise; <br>For false the reasoning of those that say <br>Immortal mind is changed by change of body- <br>For what is changed dissolves, and therefore dies. <br>For parts are re-disposed and leave their order; <br>Wherefore they must be also capable <br>Of dissolution through the frame at last, <br>That they along with body perish all. <br>But should some say that always souls of men <br>Go into human bodies, I will ask: <br>How can a wise become a dullard soul? <br>And why is never a child's a prudent soul? <br>And the mare's filly why not trained so well <br>As sturdy strength of steed? We may be sure <br>They'll take their refuge in the thought that mind <br>Becomes a weakling in a weakling frame. <br>Yet be this so, 'tis needful to confess <br>The soul but mortal, since, so altered now <br>Throughout the frame, it loses the life and sense <br>It had before. Or how can mind wax strong <br>Co-equally with body and attain <br>The craved flower of life, unless it be <br>The body's colleague in its origins? <br>Or what's the purport of its going forth <br>From aged limbs?- fears it, perhaps, to stay, <br>Pent in a crumbled body? Or lest its house, <br>Outworn by venerable length of days, <br>May topple down upon it? But indeed <br>For an immortal, perils are there none. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Again, at parturitions of the wild <br>And at the rites of Love, that souls should stand <br>Ready hard by seems ludicrous enough- <br>Immortals waiting for their mortal limbs <br>In numbers innumerable, contending madly <br>Which shall be first and chief to enter in!- <br>Unless perchance among the souls there be <br>Such treaties stablished that the first to come <br>Flying along, shall enter in the first, <br>And that they make no rivalries of strength! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Again, in ether can't exist a tree, <br>Nor clouds in ocean deeps, nor in the fields <br>Can fishes live, nor blood in timber be, <br>Nor sap in boulders: fixed and arranged <br>Where everything may grow and have its place. <br>Thus nature of mind cannot arise alone <br>Without the body, nor exist afar <br>From thews and blood. But if 'twere possible, <br>Much rather might this very power of mind <br>Be in the head, the shoulders or the heels, <br>And, born in any part soever, yet <br>In the same man, in the same vessel abide. <br>But since within this body even of ours <br>Stands fixed and appears arranged sure <br>Where soul and mind can each exist and grow, <br>Deny we must the more that they can have <br>Duration and birth, wholly outside the frame. <br>For, verily, the mortal to conjoin <br>With the eternal, and to feign they feel <br>Together, and can function each with each, <br>Is but to dote: for what can be conceived <br>Of more unlike, discrepant, ill-assorted, <br>Than something mortal in a union joined <br>With an immortal and a secular <br>To bear the outrageous tempests? <br>Then, again, <br>Whatever abides eternal must indeed <br>Either repel all strokes, because 'tis made <br>Of solid body, and permit no entrance <br>Of aught with power to sunder from within <br>The parts compact- as are those seeds of stuff <br>Whose nature we've exhibited before; <br>Or else be able to endure through time <br>For this: because they are from blows exempt, <br>As is the void, the which abides untouched, <br>Unsmit by any stroke; or else because <br>There is no room around, whereto things can, <br>As 'twere, depart in dissolution all,- <br>Even as the sum of sums eternal is, <br>Without or place beyond whereto things may <br>Asunder fly, or bodies which can smite, <br>And thus dissolve them by the blows of might. <br>But if perchance the soul's to be adjudged <br>Immortal, mainly on ground 'tis kept secure <br>In vital forces- either because there come <br>Never at all things hostile to its weal, <br>Or else because what come somehow retire, <br>Repelled or ere we feel the harm they work, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">For, lo, besides that, when the frame's diseased, <br>Soul sickens too, there cometh, many a time, <br>That which torments it with the things to be, <br>Keeps it in dread, and wearies it with cares; <br>And even when evil acts are of the past, <br>Still gnaw the old transgressions bitterly. <br>Add, too, that frenzy, peculiar to the mind, <br>And that oblivion of the things that were; <br>Add its submergence in the murky waves <br>Of drowse and torpor.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Lucretius">Lucretius</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=450290" data-title="Book III - Part 03 - The Soul is Mortal de Lucretius" data-description="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..."></div> </div> </div>

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