The Soul Is Mortal
Now come: that thou mayst able be to knowThat minds and the light souls of all that liveHave mortal birth and death, I will go onVerses 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, thinkThereby I’m speaking also of the mind—Since both are one, a substance inter-joined.First, then, since I have taught how soul existsA subtle fabric, of particles minute,Made up from atoms smaller much than thoseOf water’s liquid damp, or fog, or smoke,So in mobility it far excels,More prone to move, though strook by lighter causeEven 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 comeTo us from outward. Now, then, since thou seest,Their liquids depart, their waters flow away,When jars are shivered, and since fog and smokeDepart into the winds away, believeThe soul no less is shed abroad and diesMore quickly far, more quickly is dissolvedBack to its primal bodies, when withdrawnFrom out man’s members it has gone away.For, sure, if body (container of the sameLike as a jar), when shivered from some cause,And rarefied by loss of blood from veins,Cannot for longer hold the soul, how thenThinkst thou it can be held by any air—A stuff much rarer than our bodies be?
Besides we feel that mind to being comesAlong with body, with body grows and ages.For just as children totter round aboutWith frames infirm and tender, so there followsA weakling wisdom in their minds; and then,Where years have ripened into robust powers,Counsel is also greater, more increasedThe power of mind; thereafter, where alreadyThe 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 comeAlong with body and grow, and, as I’ve taught,Crumble and crack, therewith outworn by eld.
Then, too, we see, that, just as body takesMonstrous diseases and the dreadful pain,So mind its bitter cares, the grief, the fear;Wherefore it tallies that the mind no lessPartaker is of death; for pain and diseaseAre both artificers of death,—as wellWe’ve learned by the passing of many a man ere now.Nay, too, in diseases of body, often the mindWanders 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 hereOf those about him standing with wet cheeksWho vainly call him back to light and life.Wherefore mind too, confess we must, dissolves,Seeing, indeed, contagions of diseaseEnter 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 wineIs 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, bereavedOf any life thereafter. And, moreover,Often will some one in a sudden fit,As if by stroke of lightning, tumble downBefore our eyes, and sputter foam, and grunt,Blither, and twist about with sinews taut,Gasp up in starts, and weary out his limbsWith tossing round. No marvel, since distractThrough frame by violence of disease.
Confounds, he foams, as if to vomit soul,As on the salt sea boil the billows roundUnder the master might of winds. And nowA groan’s forced out, because his limbs are griped,But, in the main, because the seeds of voiceAre driven forth and carried in a massOutwards by mouth, where they are wont to go,And have a builded highway. He becomesMere fool, since energy of mind and soulConfounded is, and, as I’ve shown, to-riven,Asunder thrown, and torn to pieces allBy the same venom. But, again, where causeOf that disease has faced about, and backRetreats sharp poison of corrupted frameInto its shadowy lairs, the man at firstArises reeling, and gradually comes backTo all his senses and recovers soul.Thus, since within the body itself of manThe mind and soul are by such great diseasesShaken, 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 beBy medicine, this is forewarning tooThat mortal lives the mind. For proper it isThat whosoe’er begins and undertakesTo alter the mind, or meditates to changeAny another nature soever, should addNew parts, or readjust the order given,Or from the sum remove at least a bit.But what’s immortal willeth for itselfIts parts be nor increased, nor rearranged,Nor any bit soever flow away:For change of anything from out its boundsMeans 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 offAll refuge from the adversary, and routError 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, withoutThe body and the man himself, which seems,As ‘twere the vessel of the same—or aughtWhate’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 powersOnly in union prosper and enjoy;For neither can nature of mind, alone of selfSans body, give the vital motions forth;Nor, then, can body, wanting soul, endureAnd use the senses. Verily, as the eye,Alone, up-rended from its roots, apartFrom all the body, can peer about at naught,So soul and mind it seems are nothing able,When by themselves. No marvel, because, commixedThrough veins and inwards, and through bones and thews,Their elements primordial are confinedBy all the body, and own no power freeTo bound around through interspaces big,Thus, shut within these confines, they take onMotions of sense, which, after death, thrown outBeyond 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 allWhich in the thews and in the body itselfA 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 lifeIs in the fact of their conjoined estate.
Once more, since body’s unable to sustainDivision from the soul, without decayAnd obscene stench, how canst thou doubt but thatThe soul, uprisen from the body’s deeps,Has filtered away, wide-drifted like a smoke,Or that the changed body crumbling fellWith 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 wayAnd orifice? And so by many meansThou’rt free to learn that nature of the soulHath passed in fragments out along the frame,And that ’twas shivered in the very bodyEre ever it slipped abroad and swam awayInto the winds of air. For never a manDying appears to feel the soul go forthAs 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 dissolveEach 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 bodyHath 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 entireLoosened to be; the countenance becomesFlaccid, as if the supreme hour were there;And flabbily collapse the members allAgainst the bloodless trunk—the kind of caseWe 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 uponThe man’s last link of life. For then the mindAnd all the power of soul are shook so sore,And these so totter along with all the frame,That any cause a little stronger mightDissolve them altogether.—Why, then, doubtThat soul, when once without the body thrust,There in the open, an enfeebled thing,Its wrappings stripped away, cannot endureNot 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 stillTo one sole seat, to one fixed haunt, the breast,If not that fixed places be assignedFor each thing’s birth, where each, when ’tis create,Is able to endure, and that our framesHave such complex adjustments that no shiftIn order of our members may appear?To that degree effect succeeds to cause,Nor is the flame once wont to be createIn 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 beEndowed with senses five,—nor is there wayBut this whereby to image to ourselvesHow under-souls may roam in Acheron.Thus painters and the elder race of bardsHave pictured souls with senses so endowed.But neither eyes, nor nose, nor hand, aloneApart from body can exist for soul,Nor tongue nor ears apart. And hence indeedAlone by self they can nor feel nor be.
And since we mark the vital sense to beIn the whole body, all one living thing,If of a sudden a force with rapid strokeShould slice it down the middle and cleave in twain,Beyond a doubt likewise the soul itself,Divided, dissevered, asunder will be flungAlong with body. But what severed isAnd into sundry parts divides, indeedAdmits it owns no everlasting nature.We hear how chariots of war, areekWith hurly slaughter, lop with flashing scythesThe limbs away so suddenly that there,Fallen from the trunk, they quiver on the earth,The while the mind and powers of the manCan feel no pain, for swiftness of his hurt,And sheer abandon in the zest of battle:With the remainder of his frame he seeksAnew the battle and the slaughter, nor marksHow the swift wheels and scythes of ravin have draggedOff with the horses his left arm and shield;Nor other how his right has dropped away,Mounting again and on. A third attemptsWith leg dismembered to arise and stand,Whilst, on the ground hard by, the dying footTwitches its spreading toes. And even the head,When from the warm and living trunk lopped off,Keeps on the ground the vital countenanceAnd open eyes, until ‘t has rendered upAll remnants of the soul. Nay, once again:If, when a serpent’s darting forth its tongue,And lashing its tail, thou gettest chance to hewWith axe its length of trunk to many parts,Thou’lt see each severed fragment writhing roundWith its fresh wound, and spattering up the sod,And there the fore-part seeking with the jawsAfter the hinder, with bite to stop the pain.So shall we say that these be souls entireIn all those fractions?—but from that ‘twould followOne 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 eachHewn into many parts. Again, how oftenWe 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 restSlow 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 perchanceIf thou supposest that the soul itselfCan inward draw along the frame, and bringIts parts together to one place, and soFrom all the members draw the sense away,Why, then, that place in which such stock of soulCollected 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 nowI please to grant the false, and say that soulCan thus be lumped within the frames of thoseWho 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 massFrom all its parts, sink down to brutish death,Since more and more in every region senseFails the whole man, and less and less of lifeIn every region lingers.
And besides,If soul immortal is, and winds its wayInto the body at the birth of man,Why can we not remember something, then,Of life-time spent before? why keep we notSome footprints of the things we did of, old?But if so changed hath been the power of mind,That every recollection of things doneIs fallen away, at no o’erlong removeIs that, I trow, from what we mean by death.Wherefore ’tis sure that what hath been beforeHath died, and what now is is now create.
Moreover, if after the body hath been builtOur 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 fitFor them to live as if they seemed to growAlong 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 teethShare in sensation, as proven by dull ache,By twinge from icy water, or grating crunchUpon a stone that got in mouth with bread.Wherefore, again, again, souls must be thoughtNor 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 cleaveTo these our frames, nor, since so interwove,Appears it that they’re able to go forthUnhurt and whole and loose themselves unscathedFrom all the thews, articulations, bones.But, if perchance thou thinkest that the soul,From outward winding in its way, is wontTo seep and soak along these members ours,Then all the more ‘twill perish, being thusWith body fused—for what will seep and soakWill be dissolved and will therefore die.For just as food, dispersed through all the poresOf body, and passed through limbs and all the frame,Perishes, supplying from itself the stuffFor 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 passThose particles from which created isThis nature of mind, now ruler of our body,Born from that soul which perished, when dividedAlong the frame. Wherefore it seems that soulHath both a natal and funeral hour.
Besides are seeds of soul there left behindIn 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 awayIt leaves not one remainder of itselfBehind 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 frameBubble and swarm? But if perchance thou thinkestThat souls from outward into worms can wind,And each into a separate body come,And reckonest not why many thousand soulsCollect where only one has gone away,Here is a point, in sooth, that seems to needInquiry and a putting to the test:Whether the souls go on a hunt for seedsOf 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 laboursBy more of kinship to these flaws of life,And mind by contact with that body suffersSo many ills. But grant it be for themHowever useful to construct a bodyTo 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 inTo bodies ready-made—for they cannotBe nicely interwoven with the same,And there’ll be formed no interplay of senseCommon to each.
Again, why is’t there goesImpetuous rage with lion’s breed morose,And cunning with foxes, and to deer why givenThe ancestral fear and tendency to flee,And why in short do all the rest of traitsEngender from the very start of lifeIn the members and mentality, if notBecause one certain power of mind that cameFrom its own seed and breed waxes the sameAlong with all the body? But were mindImmortal, were it wont to change its bodies,How topsy-turvy would earth’s creatures act!The Hyrcan hound would flee the onset oftOf antlered stag, the scurrying hawk would quakeAlong the winds of air at the coming dove,And men would dote, and savage beasts be wise;For false the reasoning of those that sayImmortal mind is changed by change of body—For what is changed dissolves, and therefore dies.For parts are re-disposed and leave their order;Wherefore they must be also capableOf dissolution through the frame at last,That they along with body perish all.But should some say that always souls of menGo into human bodies, I will ask:How can a wise become a dullard soul?And why is never a child’s a prudent soul?And the mare’s filly why not trained so wellAs sturdy strength of steed? We may be sureThey’ll take their refuge in the thought that mindBecomes a weakling in a weakling frame.Yet be this so, ’tis needful to confessThe soul but mortal, since, so altered nowThroughout the frame, it loses the life and senseIt had before. Or how can mind wax strongCoequally with body and attainThe craved flower of life, unless it beThe body’s colleague in its origins?Or what’s the purport of its going forthFrom aged limbs?—fears it, perhaps, to stay,Pent in a crumbled body? Or lest its house,Outworn by venerable length of days,May topple down upon it? But indeedFor an immortal perils are there none.
Again, at parturitions of the wildAnd at the rites of Love, that souls should standReady hard by seems ludicrous enough—Immortals waiting for their mortal limbsIn numbers innumerable, contending madlyWhich shall be first and chief to enter in!—Unless perchance among the souls there beSuch treaties stablished that the first to comeFlying along, shall enter in the first,And that they make no rivalries of strength!
Again, in ether can’t exist a tree,Nor clouds in ocean deeps, nor in the fieldsCan fishes live, nor blood in timber be,Nor sap in boulders: fixed and arrangedWhere everything may grow and have its place.Thus nature of mind cannot arise aloneWithout the body, nor exist afarFrom thews and blood. But if ‘twere possible,Much rather might this very power of mindBe in the head, the shoulders or the heels,And, born in any part soever, yetIn the same man, in the same vessel abide.But since within this body even of oursStands fixed and appears arranged sureWhere soul and mind can each exist and grow,Deny we must the more that they can haveDuration and birth, wholly outside the frame.For, verily, the mortal to conjoinWith the eternal, and to feign they feelTogether, and can function each with each,Is but to dote: for what can be conceivedOf more unlike, discrepant, ill-assorted,Than something mortal in a union joinedWith an immortal and a secularTo bear the outrageous tempests?
Then, again,Whatever abides eternal must indeedEither repel all strokes, because ’tis madeOf solid body, and permit no entranceOf aught with power to sunder from withinThe parts compact—as are those seeds of stuffWhose nature we’ve exhibited before;Or else be able to endure through timeFor this: because they are from blows exempt,As is the void, the which abides untouched,Unsmit by any stroke; or else becauseThere is no room around, whereto things can,As ‘twere, depart in dissolution all,—Even as the sum of sums eternal is,Without or place beyond whereto things mayAsunder fly, or bodies which can smite,And thus dissolve them by the blows of might.
But if perchance the soul’s to be adjudgedImmortal, mainly on ground ’tis kept secureIn vital forces—either because there comeNever at all things hostile to its weal,Or else because what come somehow retire,Repelled or ere we feel the harm they work,
For, lo, besides that, when the frame’s diseased,Soul sickens too, there cometh, many a time,That which torments it with the things to be,Keeps it in dread, and wearies it with cares;And even when evil acts are of the past,Still gnaw the old transgressions bitterly.Add, too, that frenzy, peculiar to the mind,And that oblivion of the things that were;Add its submergence in the murky wavesOf drowse and torpor.