O thou who first uplifted in such dark
     So clear a torch aloft, who first shed light
     Upon the profitable ends of man,
     O thee I follow, glory of the Greeks,
     And set my footsteps squarely planted now
     Even in the impress and the marks of thine—
     Less like one eager to dispute the palm,
     More as one craving out of very love
     That I may copy thee!—for how should swallow
     Contend with swans or what compare could be
     In a race between young kids with tumbling legs
     And the strong might of the horse? Our father thou,
     And finder-out of truth, and thou to us
     Suppliest a father's precepts; and from out
     Those scriven leaves of thine, renowned soul
     (Like bees that sip of all in flowery wolds),
     We feed upon thy golden sayings all—
     Golden, and ever worthiest endless life.
     For soon as ever thy planning thought that sprang
     From god-like mind begins its loud proclaim
     Of nature's courses, terrors of the brain
     Asunder flee, the ramparts of the world
     Dispart away, and through the void entire
     I see the movements of the universe.
     Rises to vision the majesty of gods,
     And their abodes of everlasting calm
     Which neither wind may shake nor rain-cloud splash,
     Nor snow, congealed by sharp frosts, may harm
     With its white downfall: ever, unclouded sky
     O'er roofs, and laughs with far-diffused light.
     And nature gives to them their all, nor aught
     May ever pluck their peace of mind away.
     But nowhere to my vision rise no more
     The vaults of Acheron, though the broad earth
     Bars me no more from gazing down o'er all
     Which under our feet is going on below
     Along the void. O, here in these affairs
     Some new divine delight and trembling awe
     Takes hold through me, that thus by power of thine
     Nature, so plain and manifest at last,
     Hath been on every side laid bare to man!

     And since I've taught already of what sort
     The seeds of all things are, and how, distinct
     In divers forms, they flit of own accord,
     Stirred with a motion everlasting on,
     And in what mode things be from them create,
     Now, after such matters, should my verse, meseems,
     Make clear the nature of the mind and soul,
     And drive that dread of Acheron without,
     Headlong, which so confounds our human life
     Unto its deeps, pouring o'er all that is
     The black of death, nor leaves not anything
     To prosper—a liquid and unsullied joy.
     For as to what men sometimes will affirm:
     That more than Tartarus (the realm of death)
     They fear diseases and a life of shame,
     And know the substance of the soul is blood,
     Or rather wind (if haply thus their whim),
     And so need naught of this our science, then
     Thou well may'st note from what's to follow now
     That more for glory do they braggart forth
     Than for belief. For mark these very same:
     Exiles from country, fugitives afar
     From sight of men, with charges foul attaint,
     Abased with every wretchedness, they yet
     Live, and where'er the wretches come, they yet
     Make the ancestral sacrifices there,
     Butcher the black sheep, and to gods below
     Offer the honours, and in bitter case
     Turn much more keenly to religion.
     Wherefore, it's surer testing of a man
     In doubtful perils—mark him as he is
     Amid adversities; for then alone
     Are the true voices conjured from his breast,
     The mask off-stripped, reality behind.
     And greed, again, and the blind lust of honours
     Which force poor wretches past the bounds of law,
     And, oft allies and ministers of crime,
     To push through nights and days with hugest toil
     To rise untrammelled to the peaks of power—
     These wounds of life in no mean part are kept
     Festering and open by this fright of death.
     For ever we see fierce Want and foul Disgrace
     Dislodged afar from secure life and sweet,
     Like huddling Shapes before the doors of death.
     And whilst, from these, men wish to scape afar,
     Driven by false terror, and afar remove,
     With civic blood a fortune they amass,
     They double their riches, greedy, heapers-up
     Of corpse on corpse they have a cruel laugh
     For the sad burial of a brother-born,
     And hatred and fear of tables of their kin.
     Likewise, through this same terror, envy oft
     Makes them to peak because before their eyes
     That man is lordly, that man gazed upon
     Who walks begirt with honour glorious,
     Whilst they in filth and darkness roll around;
     Some perish away for statues and a name,
     And oft to that degree, from fright of death,
     Will hate of living and beholding light
     Take hold on humankind that they inflict
     Their own destruction with a gloomy heart—
     Forgetful that this fear is font of cares,
     This fear the plague upon their sense of shame,
     And this that breaks the ties of comradry
     And oversets all reverence and faith,
     Mid direst slaughter. For long ere to-day
     Often were traitors to country and dear parents
     Through quest to shun the realms of Acheron.
     For just as children tremble and fear all
     In the viewless dark, so even we at times
     Dread in the light so many things that be
     No whit more fearsome than what children feign,
     Shuddering, will be upon them in the dark.
     This terror, then, this darkness of the mind,
     Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light,
     Nor glittering arrows of morning sun disperse,
     But only nature's aspect and her law.

     First, then, I say, the mind which oft we call
     The intellect, wherein is seated life's
     Counsel and regimen, is part no less
     Of man than hand and foot and eyes are parts
     Of one whole breathing creature. [But some hold]
     That sense of mind is in no fixed part seated,
     But is of body some one vital state,—
     Named "harmony" by Greeks, because thereby
     We live with sense, though intellect be not
     In any part: as oft the body is said
     To have good health (when health, however, 's not
     One part of him who has it), so they place
     The sense of mind in no fixed part of man.
     Mightily, diversly, meseems they err.
     Often the body palpable and seen
     Sickens, while yet in some invisible part
     We feel a pleasure; oft the other way,
     A miserable in mind feels pleasure still
     Throughout his body—quite the same as when
     A foot may pain without a pain in head.
     Besides, when these our limbs are given o'er
     To gentle sleep and lies the burdened frame
     At random void of sense, a something else
     Is yet within us, which upon that time
     Bestirs itself in many a wise, receiving
     All motions of joy and phantom cares of heart.
     Now, for to see that in man's members dwells
     Also the soul, and body ne'er is wont
     To feel sensation by a "harmony"
     Take this in chief: the fact that life remains
     Oft in our limbs, when much of body's gone;
     Yet that same life, when particles of heat,
     Though few, have scattered been, and through the mouth
     Air has been given forth abroad, forthwith
     Forever deserts the veins, and leaves the bones.
     Thus mayst thou know that not all particles
     Perform like parts, nor in like manner all
     Are props of weal and safety: rather those—
     The seeds of wind and exhalations warm—
     Take care that in our members life remains.
     Therefore a vital heat and wind there is
     Within the very body, which at death
     Deserts our frames. And so, since nature of mind
     And even of soul is found to be, as 'twere,
     A part of man, give over "harmony"—
     Name to musicians brought from Helicon,—
     Unless themselves they filched it otherwise,
     To serve for what was lacking name till then.
     Whate'er it be, they're welcome to it—thou,
     Hearken my other maxims.

                                   Mind and soul,
     I say, are held conjoined one with other,
     And form one single nature of themselves;
     But chief and regnant through the frame entire
     Is still that counsel which we call the mind,
     And that cleaves seated in the midmost breast.
     Here leap dismay and terror; round these haunts
     Be blandishments of joys; and therefore here
     The intellect, the mind. The rest of soul,
     Throughout the body scattered, but obeys—
     Moved by the nod and motion of the mind.
     This, for itself, sole through itself, hath thought;
     This for itself hath mirth, even when the thing
     That moves it, moves nor soul nor body at all.
     And as, when head or eye in us is smit
     By assailing pain, we are not tortured then
     Through all the body, so the mind alone
     Is sometimes smitten, or livens with a joy,
     Whilst yet the soul's remainder through the limbs
     And through the frame is stirred by nothing new.
     But when the mind is moved by shock more fierce,
     We mark the whole soul suffering all at once
     Along man's members: sweats and pallors spread
     Over the body, and the tongue is broken,
     And fails the voice away, and ring the ears,
     Mists blind the eyeballs, and the joints collapse,—
     Aye, men drop dead from terror of the mind.
     Hence, whoso will can readily remark
     That soul conjoined is with mind, and, when
     'Tis strook by influence of the mind, forthwith
     In turn it hits and drives the body too.

     And this same argument establisheth
     That nature of mind and soul corporeal is:
     For when 'tis seen to drive the members on,
     To snatch from sleep the body, and to change
     The countenance, and the whole state of man
     To rule and turn,—what yet could never be
     Sans contact, and sans body contact fails—
     Must we not grant that mind and soul consist
     Of a corporeal nature?—And besides
     Thou markst that likewise with this body of ours
     Suffers the mind and with our body feels.
     If the dire speed of spear that cleaves the bones
     And bares the inner thews hits not the life,
     Yet follows a fainting and a foul collapse,
     And, on the ground, dazed tumult in the mind,
     And whiles a wavering will to rise afoot.
     So nature of mind must be corporeal, since
     From stroke and spear corporeal 'tis in throes.

     Now, of what body, what components formed
     Is this same mind I will go on to tell.
     First, I aver, 'tis superfine, composed
     Of tiniest particles—that such the fact
     Thou canst perceive, if thou attend, from this:
     Nothing is seen to happen with such speed
     As what the mind proposes and begins;
     Therefore the same bestirs itself more swiftly
     Than aught whose nature's palpable to eyes.
     But what's so agile must of seeds consist
     Most round, most tiny, that they may be moved,
     When hit by impulse slight. So water moves,
     In waves along, at impulse just the least—
     Being create of little shapes that roll;
     But, contrariwise, the quality of honey
     More stable is, its liquids more inert,
     More tardy its flow; for all its stock of matter
     Cleaves more together, since, indeed, 'tis made
     Of atoms not so smooth, so fine, and round.
     For the light breeze that hovers yet can blow
     High heaps of poppy-seed away for thee
     Downward from off the top; but, contrariwise,
     A pile of stones or spiny ears of wheat
     It can't at all. Thus, in so far as bodies
     Are small and smooth, is their mobility;
     But, contrariwise, the heavier and more rough,
     The more immovable they prove. Now, then,
     Since nature of mind is movable so much,
     Consist it must of seeds exceeding small
     And smooth and round. Which fact once known to thee,
     Good friend, will serve thee opportune in else.
     This also shows the nature of the same,
     How nice its texture, in how small a space
     'Twould go, if once compacted as a pellet:
     When death's unvexed repose gets hold on man
     And mind and soul retire, thou markest there
     From the whole body nothing ta'en in form,
     Nothing in weight. Death grants ye everything,
     But vital sense and exhalation hot.
     Thus soul entire must be of smallmost seeds,
     Twined through the veins, the vitals, and the thews,
     Seeing that, when 'tis from whole body gone,
     The outward figuration of the limbs
     Is unimpaired and weight fails not a whit.
     Just so, when vanished the bouquet of wine,
     Or when an unguent's perfume delicate
     Into the winds away departs, or when
     From any body savour's gone, yet still
     The thing itself seems minished naught to eyes,
     Thereby, nor aught abstracted from its weight—
     No marvel, because seeds many and minute
     Produce the savours and the redolence
     In the whole body of the things. And so,
     Again, again, nature of mind and soul
     'Tis thine to know created is of seeds
     The tiniest ever, since at flying-forth
     It beareth nothing of the weight away.

     Yet fancy not its nature simple so.
     For an impalpable aura, mixed with heat,
     Deserts the dying, and heat draws off the air;
     And heat there's none, unless commixed with air:
     For, since the nature of all heat is rare,
     Athrough it many seeds of air must move.
     Thus nature of mind is triple; yet those all
     Suffice not for creating sense—since mind
     Accepteth not that aught of these can cause
     Sense-bearing motions, and much less the thoughts
     A man revolves in mind. So unto these
     Must added be a somewhat, and a fourth;
     That somewhat's altogether void of name;
     Than which existeth naught more mobile, naught
     More an impalpable, of elements
     More small and smooth and round. That first transmits
     Sense-bearing motions through the frame, for that
     Is roused the first, composed of little shapes;
     Thence heat and viewless force of wind take up
     The motions, and thence air, and thence all things
     Are put in motion; the blood is strook, and then
     The vitals all begin to feel, and last
     To bones and marrow the sensation comes—
     Pleasure or torment. Nor will pain for naught
     Enter so far, nor a sharp ill seep through,
     But all things be perturbed to that degree
     That room for life will fail, and parts of soul
     Will scatter through the body's every pore.
     Yet as a rule, almost upon the skin
     These motion aIl are stopped, and this is why
     We have the power to retain our life.

     Now in my eagerness to tell thee how
     They are commixed, through what unions fit
     They function so, my country's pauper-speech
     Constrains me sadly. As I can, however,
     I'll touch some points and pass. In such a wise
     Course these primordials 'mongst one another
     With inter-motions that no one can be
     From other sundered, nor its agency
     Perform, if once divided by a space;
     Like many powers in one body they work.
     As in the flesh of any creature still
     Is odour and savour and a certain warmth,
     And yet from all of these one bulk of body
     Is made complete, so, viewless force of wind
     And warmth and air, commingled, do create
     One nature, by that mobile energy
     Assisted which from out itself to them
     Imparts initial motion, whereby first
     Sense-bearing motion along the vitals springs.
     For lurks this essence far and deep and under,
     Nor in our body is aught more shut from view,
     And 'tis the very soul of all the soul.
     And as within our members and whole frame
     The energy of mind and power of soul
     Is mixed and latent, since create it is
     Of bodies small and few, so lurks this fourth,
     This essence void of name, composed of small,
     And seems the very soul of all the soul,
     And holds dominion o'er the body all.
     And by like reason wind and air and heat
     Must function so, commingled through the frame,
     And now the one subside and now another
     In interchange of dominance, that thus
     From all of them one nature be produced,
     Lest heat and wind apart, and air apart,
     Make sense to perish, by disseverment.
     There is indeed in mind that heat it gets
     When seething in rage, and flashes from the eyes
     More swiftly fire; there is, again, that wind,
     Much, and so cold, companion of all dread,
     Which rouses the shudder in the shaken frame;
     There is no less that state of air composed,
     Making the tranquil breast, the serene face.
     But more of hot have they whose restive hearts,
     Whose minds of passion quickly seethe in rage—
     Of which kind chief are fierce abounding lions,
     Who often with roaring burst the breast o'erwrought,
     Unable to hold the surging wrath within;
     But the cold mind of stags has more of wind,
     And speedier through their inwards rouses up
     The icy currents which make their members quake.
     But more the oxen live by tranquil air,
     Nor e'er doth smoky torch of wrath applied,
     O'erspreading with shadows of a darkling murk,
     Rouse them too far; nor will they stiffen stark,
     Pierced through by icy javelins of fear;
     But have their place half-way between the two—
     Stags and fierce lions. Thus the race of men:
     Though training make them equally refined,
     It leaves those pristine vestiges behind
     Of each mind's nature. Nor may we suppose
     Evil can e'er be rooted up so far
     That one man's not more given to fits of wrath,
     Another's not more quickly touched by fear,
     A third not more long-suffering than he should.
     And needs must differ in many things besides
     The varied natures and resulting habits
     Of humankind—of which not now can I
     Expound the hidden causes, nor find names
     Enough for all the divers shapes of those
     Primordials whence this variation springs.
     But this meseems I'm able to declare:
     Those vestiges of natures left behind
     Which reason cannot quite expel from us
     Are still so slight that naught prevents a man
     From living a life even worthy of the gods.

     So then this soul is kept by all the body,
     Itself the body's guard, and source of weal:
     For they with common roots cleave each to each,
     Nor can be torn asunder without death.
     Not easy 'tis from lumps of frankincense
     To tear their fragrance forth, without its nature
     Perishing likewise: so, not easy 'tis
     From all the body nature of mind and soul
     To draw away, without the whole dissolved.
     With seeds so intertwined even from birth,
     They're dowered conjointly with a partner-life;
     No energy of body or mind, apart,
     Each of itself without the other's power,
     Can have sensation; but our sense, enkindled
     Along the vitals, to flame is blown by both
     With mutual motions. Besides the body alone
     Is nor begot nor grows, nor after death
     Seen to endure. For not as water at times
     Gives off the alien heat, nor is thereby
     Itself destroyed, but unimpaired remains—
     Not thus, I say, can the deserted frame
     Bear the dissevering of its joined soul,
     But, rent and ruined, moulders all away.
     Thus the joint contact of the body and soul
     Learns from their earliest age the vital motions,
     Even when still buried in the mother's womb;
     So no dissevering can hap to them,
     Without their bane and ill. And thence mayst see
     That, as conjoined is their source of weal,
     Conjoined also must their nature be.

     If one, moreover, denies that body feel,
     And holds that soul, through all the body mixed,
     Takes on this motion which we title "sense,"
     He battles in vain indubitable facts:
     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.

     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,
     Mounting again and on. A third attempts
     With leg dismembered to arise and stand,
     Whilst, on the ground hard by, the dying foot
     Twitches its spreading toes. And even the head,
     When from the warm and living trunk lopped off,
     Keeps on the ground the vital countenance
     And open eyes, until 't has rendered up
     All remnants of the soul. Nay, once again:
     If, when a serpent's darting forth its tongue,
     And lashing its tail, thou gettest chance to hew
     With axe its length of trunk to many parts,
     Thou'lt see each severed fragment writhing round
     With its fresh wound, and spattering up the sod,
     And there the fore-part seeking with the jaws
     After the hinder, with bite to stop the pain.
     So shall we say that these be souls entire
     In all those fractions?—but from that 'twould follow
     One 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 each
     Hewn into many parts. Again, how often
     We 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 rest
     Slow 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 perchance
     If thou supposest that the soul itself
     Can inward draw along the frame, and bring
     Its parts together to one place, and so
     From all the members draw the sense away,
     Why, then, that place in which such stock of soul
     Collected 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 now
     I please to grant the false, and say that soul
     Can thus be lumped within the frames of those
     Who 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 mass
     From all its parts, sink down to brutish death,
     Since more and more in every region sense
     Fails the whole man, and less and less of life
     In every region lingers.

                            And besides,
     If soul immortal is, and winds its way
     Into the body at the birth of man,
     Why can we not remember something, then,
     Of life-time spent before? why keep we not
     Some footprints of the things we did of, old?
     But if so changed hath been the power of mind,
     That every recollection of things done
     Is fallen away, at no o'erlong remove
     Is that, I trow, from what we mean by death.
     Wherefore 'tis sure that what hath been before
     Hath died, and what now is is now create.

     Moreover, if after the body hath been built
     Our 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 fit
     For them to live as if they seemed to grow
     Along 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 teeth
     Share in sensation, as proven by dull ache,
     By twinge from icy water, or grating crunch
     Upon a stone that got in mouth with bread.
     Wherefore, again, again, souls must be thought
     Nor 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 cleave
     To these our frames, nor, since so interwove,
     Appears it that they're able to go forth
     Unhurt and whole and loose themselves unscathed
     From all the thews, articulations, bones.
     But, if perchance thou thinkest that the soul,
     From outward winding in its way, is wont
     To seep and soak along these members ours,
     Then all the more 'twill perish, being thus
     With body fused—for what will seep and soak
     Will be dissolved and will therefore die.
     For just as food, dispersed through all the pores
     Of body, and passed through limbs and all the frame,
     Perishes, supplying from itself the stuff
     For 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 pass
     Those particles from which created is
     This nature of mind, now ruler of our body,
     Born from that soul which perished, when divided
     Along the frame. Wherefore it seems that soul
     Hath both a natal and funeral hour.

     Besides are seeds of soul there left behind
     In 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 away
     It leaves not one remainder of itself
     Behind 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 frame
     Bubble and swarm? But if perchance thou thinkest
     That souls from outward into worms can wind,
     And each into a separate body come,
     And reckonest not why many thousand souls
     Collect where only one has gone away,
     Here is a point, in sooth, that seems to need
     Inquiry and a putting to the test:
     Whether the souls go on a hunt for seeds
     Of 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 labours
     By more of kinship to these flaws of life,
     And mind by contact with that body suffers
     So many ills. But grant it be for them
     However useful to construct a body
     To 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 in
     To bodies ready-made—for they cannot
     Be nicely interwoven with the same,
     And there'll be formed no interplay of sense
     Common to each.

                      Again, why is't there goes
     Impetuous rage with lion's breed morose,
     And cunning with foxes, and to deer why given
     The ancestral fear and tendency to flee,
     And why in short do all the rest of traits
     Engender from the very start of life
     In the members and mentality, if not
     Because one certain power of mind that came
     From its own seed and breed waxes the same
     Along with all the body? But were mind
     Immortal, were it wont to change its bodies,
     How topsy-turvy would earth's creatures act!
     The Hyrcan hound would flee the onset oft
     Of antlered stag, the scurrying hawk would quake
     Along the winds of air at the coming dove,
     And men would dote, and savage beasts be wise;
     For false the reasoning of those that say
     Immortal 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 capable
     Of dissolution through the frame at last,
     That they along with body perish all.
     But should some say that always souls of men
     Go 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 well
     As sturdy strength of steed? We may be sure
     They'll take their refuge in the thought that mind
     Becomes a weakling in a weakling frame.
     Yet be this so, 'tis needful to confess
     The soul but mortal, since, so altered now
     Throughout the frame, it loses the life and sense
     It had before. Or how can mind wax strong
     Coequally with body and attain
     The craved flower of life, unless it be
     The body's colleague in its origins?
     Or what's the purport of its going forth
     From 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 indeed
     For an immortal perils are there none.

     Again, at parturitions of the wild
     And at the rites of Love, that souls should stand
     Ready hard by seems ludicrous enough—
     Immortals waiting for their mortal limbs
     In numbers innumerable, contending madly
     Which shall be first and chief to enter in!—
     Unless perchance among the souls there be
     Such treaties stablished that the first to come
     Flying 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 fields
     Can fishes live, nor blood in timber be,
     Nor sap in boulders: fixed and arranged
     Where everything may grow and have its place.
     Thus nature of mind cannot arise alone
     Without the body, nor exist afar
     From thews and blood. But if 'twere possible,
     Much rather might this very power of mind
     Be in the head, the shoulders or the heels,
     And, born in any part soever, yet
     In the same man, in the same vessel abide.
     But since within this body even of ours
     Stands fixed and appears arranged sure
     Where soul and mind can each exist and grow,
     Deny we must the more that they can have
     Duration and birth, wholly outside the frame.
     For, verily, the mortal to conjoin
     With the eternal, and to feign they feel
     Together, and can function each with each,
     Is but to dote: for what can be conceived
     Of more unlike, discrepant, ill-assorted,
     Than something mortal in a union joined
     With an immortal and a secular
     To bear the outrageous tempests?

                               Then, again,
     Whatever abides eternal must indeed
     Either repel all strokes, because 'tis made
     Of solid body, and permit no entrance
     Of aught with power to sunder from within
     The parts compact—as are those seeds of stuff
     Whose nature we've exhibited before;
     Or else be able to endure through time
     For this: because they are from blows exempt,
     As is the void, the which abides untouched,
     Unsmit by any stroke; or else because
     There 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 may
     Asunder fly, or bodies which can smite,
     And thus dissolve them by the blows of might.

     But if perchance the soul's to be adjudged
     Immortal, mainly on ground 'tis kept secure
     In vital forces—either because there come
     Never at all things hostile to its weal,
     Or else because what come somehow retire,
     Repelled or ere we feel the harm they work,