第26章

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.