第25章

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.

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.