ON THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE

BOOK III:  LIFE AND MIND

You, [1] who out of such black darkness were first [2] to lift up so shining a light, [3] revealing the hidden blessings of life - you are my leader, O glory of the Grecian race. In your well-marked footprints now I plant my resolute steps. It is from love alone that I long to imitate you, not from emulous ambition. Shall the swallow contend in song with the swan, or the kid match its rickety legs in a race with the strong-limbed steed? You are our father, illustrious discoverer of truth, and give me a father's guidance. From your pages, as bees in flowery glades sip every blossom, so do I crop all your golden sayings - golden indeed, and for ever worthy of everlasting life.

As soon as your reasoning, sprung from that godlike mind, lifts up its voice to proclaim the nature of the universe, then the terrors of the mind take flight, the ramparts of the world roll apart, and I see the march of events throughout the whole of space. The majesty of the gods [4] is revealed and those quiet habitations, never shaken by storms or drenched by rain-clouds or defaced by white drifts of snow which a harsh frost congeals. A cloudless ether roofs them and laughs with radiance lavishly diffused. All their wants are supplied by nature, and nothing at any time cankers their peace of mind. But nowhere do I see the halls of Acheron, [5] though the earth is no barrier to my beholding all that passes underfoot in the space beneath. At this I am seized with a divine delight and a shuddering awe that by your power nature stands thus unveiled and made manifest in every part.

I have already shown what the component bodies of everything are like: how they vary in shape: how they fly spontaneously through space, impelled by a perpetual motion: and how from these all objects can be created. [6] The next step now is evidently to elucidate in my verses the nature of mind and of spirit. In so doing I must throw out the fear of Acheron head over heels - that fear which blasts the life of man from its very foundations, sullying everything with the blackness of death and leaving no  pleasure pure and unalloyed. [7] I know that men often speak of sickness or of shameful life as more to be dreaded than the lowest pit of death; they claim to know that the mind consists of blood, or maybe wind, [8] if that is how the whim takes them, and to stand in no need whatever of our reasoning. But all this talk is based more on a desire to show off than on actual proof, as you may infer from their conduct. These same men, though they may be exiled from home, banished far from the sight of their fellows, soiled with the accusation of some filthy crime, a prey to every torment, still cling to life. Wherever they come in their tribulation, they make propitiatory sacrifices, slaughter black cattle and dispatch offerings to the Departed Spirits. The heavier their afflictions, the more devoutly they turn their minds to superstition. Look at a man in the midst of trouble and danger, and you will learn in his hour of adversity what he really is. It is then that true utterances are wrung from the depths of his heart. The mask is torn off; the reality remains. [9]

Consider too the greed [10] and blind lust of status that drive pathetic men to overstep the bounds of right and may even turn them into accomplices or instruments of crime, struggling night and day with unstinted effort to scale the pinnacles of wealth. These running sores of life are fed in no small measure by the fear of death. For abject ignominy and irksome poverty seem far indeed from the joy and assurance of life, loitering already in effect at the gateway of death. From such a fate men revolt in groundless terror and long to escape far, far away. So in their greed of gain they amass a fortune out of civil bloodshed; [11] piling wealth on wealth, they heap carnage on carnage. With heartless glee they welcome a brother's tragic death. They hate and fear the hospitable board of their own kin. Often, in the same spirit and influenced by the same fear, they are consumed with envy at the sight of another's success: he walks in a blaze of glory, looked up to by all, while they curse the dingy squalor in which their own lives are bogged. Some sacrifice life itself for the sake of statues and a title. Often from fear of death mortals are gripped by such a hate of living and looking on the light that with anguished hearts they do themselves to death. They forget that this fear is the very fountainhead of their troubles: this it is that harasses conscience, snaps the bonds of friendship and in a word utterly destroys all moral responsibility. [12] For many a time before now men have betrayed their country and their beloved parents in an effort to escape the halls of Acheron.

As children in blank darkness tremble and start at everything, so we in broad daylight are oppressed at times by fears as baseless as those horrors which children imagine coming upon them in the dark. This dread and darkness of the mind cannot be dispelled by the sunbeams, the shining shafts of day, but only by an understanding of the outward form and inner workings of nature.

First, I maintain that the mind, [13] which we often call the intellect, the seat of the guidance and control of life, is part of a man, no less than hand or foot or eyes are parts of a whole living creature. <There are some who argue that> the sentience of the mind is not lodged in any particular part, but is a vital condition of the body, what the Greeks call a harmony. [14] which makes us live as sentient beings without having any locally determined mind. Just as good health may be said to belong [15] to the healthy body without being any specific part of it, so they do not station the sentience of the mind in any specific part. In this they seem to me very wide of the mark. Often enough the visible body is obviously ill, while in some other unseen part we are enjoying ourselves. No less often the reverse happens: one who is sick at heart enjoys bodily well-being. [16] This is no different from the experience of an invalid whose foot is hurting while his head is in no pain.

Or consider what happens when we have surrendered our limbs to soothing slumber and our body, replete and relaxed, lies insensible. [17] At that very time there is something else in us that is awake to all sorts of stimuli -something that gives free admittance to all the motions of joy and to heartaches void of substance.

Next, you must understand that there is also a vital spirit [18] in our limbs and the body does not derive its sentience from any 'harmony'. In the first place, life often lingers in our limbs after a large part of the body has been cut off. On the other hand, when a few particles of heat have dispersed and some air has been let out through the mouth, life forsakes the veins forthwith and abandons the bones. Hence you may infer that all the elements do not hold equal portions of vitality or support it equally, but it is chiefly thanks to the atoms of wind and heat that life lingers in the limbs. There is therefore in the body itself a vital breath and heat which forsakes our limbs at death.

Now that we have discovered the nature of the mind and of the vital spirit as a part of the man, drop this name harmony which was passed down to the musicians [19] from the heights of Helicon - or else perhaps they fetched it themselves from some other source and applied it to the matter of their art, which had then no name of its own. Whatever it be, let them keep it. And give your attention now to the rest of my discourse.

Next, I maintain that mind and spirit are interconnected and compose between them a single substance. But what I may call the head and the dominant force in the whole body is that guiding principle which we term mind or intellect. This is firmly lodged in the mid-region of the breast. [20] Here is the place where fear and alarm pulsate. Here is felt the caressing touch of joy. Here, then, is the seat of intellect and mind. The rest of the vital spirit, diffused throughout the body, obeys the mind and moves under its direction and impulse. The mind by itself experiences thought and joy of its own at a time when nothing moves either the body or the spirit.

When our head or eye suffers from an attack of pain, our whole body does not share in its aching. Just so the mind sometimes suffers by itself or jumps for joy when the rest of the spirit, diffused through every limb and member, is not stirred by any new impulse. But, when the mind is upset by some more overwhelming fear, we see all the spirit in every limb upset in sympathy. Sweat [21] and pallor break out all over the body. Speech grows inarticulate; the voice fails; the eyes grow dim; the ears buzz; the limbs totter. Often we see men actually drop down because of the terror that has gripped their minds. Hence you may readily infer a connection between the mind and the spirit, which, when shaken by the impact of the mind, immediately jostles and propels the body.

The same reasoning proves that mind and spirit are both composed of matter. We see them propelling the limbs, rousing the body from sleep, changing the expression of the face and guiding and steering the whole man - activities that all clearly involve touch, as touch in turn involves matter. How then can we deny their material nature? You see the mind sharing in the body's experiences and sympathizing with it. When the nerve-racking impact of a spear lays bare bones and sinews, even if it does not penetrate to the seat of life, there ensues faintness and a pleasant falling towards the ground and on the ground a turmoil in the mind and an intermittent faltering impulse to stand up again. The substance of the mind must therefore be material, since it suffers the impact of material weapons.

My next task will be to demonstrate to you what sort of matter it is of which this mind is composed and how it was formed. First I affirm that it is of very fine texture and composed of exceptionally minute particles. If you will mark my words, you will be able to infer this from the following facts. It is evident that nothing happens as quickly as the mind represents and sketches the happening to itself. Therefore the mind sets itself in motion more swiftly than any of those things whose substance is visible to our eyes. But what is so mobile must consist of exceptionally spherical and minute atoms, so that it can be set going by a slight push. The reason why water is set going and flowing by such a slight push is of course the smallness of its atoms and their readiness to roll. The stickier consistency of honey [22] - its relatively sluggish flow and dilatory progress - is due to the closer coherence of the component matter, consisting, as it obviously does, of particles not so smooth or so fine or so round. A high pile of poppy seed [23] can be disturbed by a light puff of breeze, so that seed trickles down from the top, but the breeze cannot do the same to a heap of stones or corn ears. In proportion as objects are smaller and smoother, so much the more do they enjoy mobility; the greater their weight and roughness, the more firmly are they anchored. Since, therefore, the substance of the mind has been found to be extraordinarily mobile, it must consist of particles exceptionally small and smooth and round. This discovery, my good friend, will prove a timely aid to you in many problems. [24]

Here is a further indication how flimsy is the texture of the vital spirit and in how small a space it could be contained if it could be massed together. At the instant when a man is mastered by the carefree calm of death and forsaken by mind and spirit, you cannot tell either by sight or by weight that any part of the whole has been filched away from his body. Death leaves everything there, except vital sentience and warmth. Therefore the vital spirit as a whole must consist of very tiny atoms, linked together throughout veins, flesh and sinews - atoms so small that, when all the spirit has escaped from the whole body, the outermost contour of the limbs appears intact and there is no loss of weight. The same thing happens when the bouquet has evaporated from the juice of Bacchus, [25] or the sweet perfume of an ointment has escaped into the air, or some substance has lost its savour, The substance itself is not visibly diminished by the loss, and its weight is not lessened, obviously because savour and scent are caused by many minute atoms distributed throughout the mass. On every ground, therefore, it may be inferred that mind and spirit are composed of exceptionally diminutive atoms, since their departure is not accompanied by any loss of weight.

It must not be supposed that the stuff of mind or spirit is a single element. The body at death is abandoned by a sort of rarefied wind mixed with warmth, while the warmth carries with it also air. Indeed, heat never occurs without air being mixed with it; because it is naturally sparse, it must have many atoms of air moving in its interstices.

The composition of mind is thus so far found to be at least threefold. [26] But all these three components together are not enough to create sentience, since the mind does not admit that any of these can create the sensory motions that originate the meditations revolved in the mind. We must accordingly add to these a fourth component, which is quite nameless. Than this there is nothing more mobile or more tenuous - nothing whose component atoms are smaller or smoother. This it is that first sets the sensory motions coursing through the limbs. Owing to the minuteness of its atoms, it is first to be stirred. Then the motions are caught up by warmth and the unseen energy of wind, then by air. Then everything is roused to movement: the blood is quickened; the impulse spreads throughout the flesh; last of all, bones and marrow are thrilled with pleasure or the opposite excitement. To this extremity pain cannot lightly penetrate, or the pangs of anguish win through. If they do, then everything is so confounded that no room is left for life, and the components of the vital spirit escape through all the pores [27] of the body. But usually a stop is put to these movements as near as may be at the surface of the body; and that is how we contrive to cling on to life.

At this point I should like to demonstrate how these combinations are intermixed and from what mode of combination they derive their powers. Reluctantly, I am thwarted in my purpose by the poverty of our native tongue. [28] But, so far as I can touch upon the surface of this topic, I will tackle it.

The atoms rush in and out amongst one another on atomic trajectories, so that no one of them can be segregated [29] nor its distinctive power isolated by intervening space. They coexist like the many properties of a single body. In the flesh of any living thing there are regularly scent and color and taste; and yet from all these there is formed only one corporeal bulk. Just so, warmth and air and the unseen energy of wind create in combination a single substance, together with that mobile force which imparts to them from itself the initial impetus from which the sensory motion takes its rise throughout the flesh. This basic substance lurks at our very core. There is nothing in our bodies more fundamental than this, the most vital element of the whole vital spirit. Just as in our limbs and body as a whole mind and spirit with their interconnected powers are latent, because their component atoms are small and sparse, so this nameless element composed of minute atoms is latent in the vital spirit and is in turn its vital element and rules the whole body. [30]

In the same way, wind and air and warmth commingled through the limbs must interact, one being relatively latent, another prominent. In appearance a single stuff is formed by them all: warmth and wind and air do not display their powers separately so as to blot out sentience and dissolve it by their disunion. First, [31] there is at the mind's disposal that element of heat, which it brings into play when it boils with rage and passion blazes more fiercely from the eyes. There is likewise no lack of that chill wind, companion of fright, which sets the limbs atremble and impels them to flight. There is lastly that calm and steady air which prevails in a tranquil breast and unruffled countenance.

In those creatures whose passionate hearts and angry dispositions easily boil up in anger, there is a surplus of the hot element. An outstanding example is the truculent temper of lions, who often roar till they burst their chests with bellowing and cannot keep the torrents of their rage pent within their breasts. But the cold hearts of deer are of a windier blend: they are quicker to set chill breezes blowing through the flesh, provoking a shuddering movement in the limbs. Cattle, again, have in their vital composition a bigger portion of calm air. They are never too hotly fired by a touch of that smoky torch of anger which clouds the mind with its black and blinding shadow. They are never transfixed and benumbed by the icy shaft of fear. Their nature is a mean between the timidity of the deer and the lion's ferocity.

So it is with men. Though education may apply a similar polish to various individuals, it still leaves fundamental traces of their several temperaments. It must not be supposed that innate vices can be completely eradicated: one man will still incline too readily to outbursts of rage; another will give way to fear rather too soon; a third will accept some contingencies too impassively. And in a host of other ways men must differ one from another in temperament and so also in the resultant behavior. To unfold here the secret causes of these differences is beyond my power. I cannot even find names for the multiplicity of atomic shapes that give rise to this variety of types. But I am clear that there is one relevant fact I can affirm: the lingering traces of inborn temperament that cannot be eliminated by philosophy are so slight that there is nothing to prevent men leading a life worthy of the gods. [32]

This vital spirit, then, is present in the whole body. It is the body's guardian and preserver. For the two are interlocked by common roots and cannot be torn apart without manifest disaster. As easily could the scent be torn out of lumps of incense [33] without destroying their nature as mind and spirit could be abstracted from the whole body without total dissolution. So from their earliest origin the two are charged with a communal life by the intertangled atoms that compose them. It is clear that neither body nor mind by itself without the other's aid possesses the power of sensation: it is by the interacting motions of the two combined that the flame of sentience is kindled in our flesh.

Again, [34] body by itself never experiences birth or growth, and we see that it does not persist after death. Water, we know, often gives up the heat imparted to it without being torn apart in the process and survives intact. Not so can the derelict limbs outlast the departure of the vital spirit: they are utterly demolished by internal decomposition and decay. So from the very beginning, even when they are at rest in the mother's womb, body and spirit in mutual contact acquire the motions that generate life. They cannot be wrenched apart without hurt and havoc. So you may see, since their very existence depends upon conjunction, that their nature must likewise be conjoint.

If anyone still denies that the body is sentient, and believes it is the spirit interfused throughout the body that assumes this motion which we term  sensation, he is fighting against manifest facts. Who can explain what bodily sensation really is, if it be not such as it is palpably presented to us by  experience? [35] Admittedly, when the spirit is banished, the body is quite insensible. That is because what it loses was never one of its permanent properties, but one of many attributes which it loses at death.

Again, it is impossible to maintain [36] that the eyes can see nothing, but the mind peeps out through them as though through open doors. The sense of sight itself leads us the other way, dragging and tugging us right to the eyeballs. Often, for instance, we cannot see bright objects, because our eyes are dazzled by light. This is an experience unknown to doors: the  doorways through which we gaze suffer no distress by being flung open. Besides, if our eyes are equivalent to doors, then when the eyes are removed the mind obviously ought to see things better now that the doors are away, doorposts and all.

Another error to be avoided, and one that is sanctioned by the revered authority of the great Democritus, [37] is the belief that the limbs are knit together by atoms of body and mind arranged alternately, first one and then the other. In fact, the atoms of spirit are not only much smaller [38] than those composing our body and flesh; they are also correspondingly fewer [39] in number and scattered but sparsely through our limbs. At least you could safely say this: observe what are the smallest objects whose impact serves to excite sensory motions in our bodies - these will give you the measure of the gaps between the atoms of spirit. Sometimes we are unaware that dust is sticking to our bodies or a cloud of chalk has settled on our limbs: we do not feel the night mist, or the slight threads of gossamer in our path that enmesh us as we walk, or the fall of a flimsy cobweb on our heads, or feathers of birds or flying thistledown, which from their very lightness do not lightly descend. We do not mark the path of every creeping thing that crawls across our body or all the separate footfalls planted by gnats and other creatures. So quite a considerable commotion must be made in our bodies before the atomic disturbance is felt by the atoms of spirit interspersed through our limbs and before these can knock together across the intervening gaps and clash and combine and again bounce apart. [40]

Note also that it is mind, far more than spirit, that keeps life under lock and  key - mind that has the greater mastery over life. Without mind and intellect no scrap of vital spirit can linger one instant in our limbs. [41] Spirit follows smoothly in the wake of mind and scatters into the air, leaving the limbs cold with the chill of death. While mind remains, life remains. One whose limbs are all lopped from the mangled trunk, [42] despite the loss of vital spirit released from the limbs, yet lives and inhales the life-giving gusts of air. Though robbed, if not of all, at least of  large proportion of his spirit, he lingers still in life and clings fast to it. Just so, though the eye [43] is lacerated all round, so long as the pupil remains intact, the faculty of vision remains alive, provided always that you do not hack away the whole encircling orb and leave the eyeball detached and isolated; for that cannot be done without total destruction. But once that tiny bit in the middle of the eye is eaten away - then the light goes out there and then and darkness falls, although the shining orb is otherwise unscathed. It is on just such terms that spirit and mind are everlastingly linked together.

My next point [44] is this: you must understand that the minds of living things and the light fabric of their spirits are neither birthless [45] nor deathless. To this end I have long been mustering and inventing verses with a labor that is also a joy. Now I will try to set them out in a style worthy of your calling and character. [46]

Please note that both objects are to be embraced under one name. When,  for instance, I proceed to demonstrate that 'spirit' is mortal, you must understand that this applies equally to 'mind', since the two are so conjoined as to constitute a single substance.

First of all, then, I have shown [47] that spirit is flimsy stuff composed of tiny particles. Its atoms are obviously far smaller than those of swift-flowing water or mist or smoke, since it far outstrips them in mobility and is moved by a far slighter impetus. Indeed, it is actually moved by images [48] of smoke and mist. So, for instance, when we are sunk in sleep, we may see altars sending up clouds of steam and giving off smoke; and we cannot doubt that we are here dealing with images. Now we see that water flows out in all directions from broken vessels and the fluid departs, and mist and smoke vanish into thin air.  Be assured, therefore, that spirit is similarly dispelled and vanishes far more speedily and is sooner dissolved into its component atoms once it has been let loose from the human frame. When the body, which served as a vessel [49] for it, is by some means broken and attenuated by loss of blood from the veins, so as to be no longer able to contain it, how can you suppose that it can be contained by any kind of air, which is a far less solid container than our bodily frame?

Again, we are conscious that mind and body are born together, grow up together and together grow old. With the weak and delicate frame of wavering childhood goes a like infirmity of judgment. The robust vigor of ripening years is accompanied by a steadier resolve and a maturer strength of mind. Later, when the body is palsied by the potent forces of age and the limbs have collapsed with blunted vigor, the understanding limps, the tongue rambles and the mind totters: everything weakens and gives way at the same time. It is thus natural that the vital spirit should all evaporate like smoke, soaring into the gusty air, since we have seen that it shares the body's birth and growth and simultaneously wears out with the weariness of age. [50]

Furthermore, as the body suffers the horrors of disease and the pangs of pain, so we see the mind stabbed with anguish, grief and fear. What more natural than that it should likewise have a share in death? Often enough in the body's illness the mind wanders. It raves and babbles distractedly. At times it drifts on a tide of drowsiness, with drooping eyelids and nodding head, into a deep and unbroken sleep, from which it cannot hear the voices or recognize the faces of those who stand around with streaming eyes and tear-stained cheeks, [51] striving to recall it to life. Since the mind is thus invaded by the contagion of disease, you must acknowledge that it is destructible. For pain and sickness are the architects of death, as we have been taught by the fate of many men [52] before us.

Again, when the pervasive power of wine has entered into a man and its glow is dispersed through his veins, his limbs are overcome with heaviness; his legs stagger and stumble; his speech is slurred, his mind besotted; his eyes swim; there is a crescendo of shouts, hiccups, quarrelling; and all the other symptoms follow in due order. Why should this be, if not because the wanton wildness of the wine has power to dislodge the vital spirit within the body? And, since things can be dislodged and arrested, this is an indication that the inroad of a slightly more potent attack would make an end of them and rob them of a future.

Or it may happen that a man is seized with a sudden spasm of epilepsy [53] before our eyes. He falls as though struck by lightning and foams at the mouth. He groans and trembles in every joint. He raves. He contracts his muscles. He writhes. He gasps convulsively. He tires his limbs with tossing. The cause of the foaming is that the spirit, torn apart by the violence of the disease throughout the limbs, riots and whips up spray, just as the wild wind's fury froths the salt sea waves. The groans are wrung from him because his limbs are racked with pain and in general because atoms of vocal sound are expelled and whirled out in a lump through the mouth - their customary outlet, where the way is already paved for them. The raving occurs because mind and spirit are dislodged and, as I have explained, split up and scattered this way and that by the same poison. Then, when the cause of the disease has passed its climax and the morbid secretion [54] of the distempered body has returned to its secret abode, then the man rises, swaying unsteadily at first, and returns bit by bit to all his senses and recovers his vital spirit. When mind [55] and spirit in the body itself are a prey to such violent maladies and suffer such distressing dispersal, how can you believe them capable of surviving apart from the body in the open air with the wild winds for company?

Conversely, we see that the mind, like a sick body, can be healed and directed by medicine. This too is a premonition that its life is mortal. When you embark on an attempt to alter the mind or to direct any other natural object, it is fair to suppose that you are adding certain parts or transposing them or subtracting some trifle at any rate from their sum. But an immortal object will not let its parts be rearranged or added to, or the least bit drop  off. For, if ever anything is so transformed as to overstep its own limits, this means the immediate death of what was before. [56] By this susceptibility both to sickness (as I have shown) and to medicine, the mind displays the marks of mortality. So false reasoning is plainly confronted by true fact. Every loophole is barred to its exponent, and by the two horns of a dilemma he is convicted of falsehood.

Again, we often see a man pass away little by little, and lose all sensation of life limb by limb: first the toes and toenails lose their color; then the feet and legs die; after that the imprint of icy death steals by slow degrees through the other members. [57] Since the vital spirit is thus dispersed and does not come out all at once in its entirety, it must be regarded as mortal. You may be tempted to suppose that it can shrink into itself through the body and draw its parts together and so withdraw sensibility from every limb. But, if that were so, the place in which such a mass of spirit was concentrated ought to display an exceptional degree of sensibility. Since there is no such place, it is evidently scattered forth torn into pieces, as I said before in other words, it perishes. Let us, however, concede this false hypothesis and suppose that the spirit concentrates within the body of those who leave the light of day through a creeping palsy. You must still acknowledge that spirit is mortal. It makes no odds whether it is scattered to the winds and disintegrated, or concentrated and deadened. In either case, the victim as a whole is more and more drained of sensibility in every part, and in every part less and less of life remains. [58]

The mind, again, is one part [59] of a man and stays fixed in a particular spot, no less than the ears and eyes and other senses by which life is guided. Now, our hand or eye or nostrils in isolation from us cannot experience sensation or even exist; in a very short time they rot away. So mind cannot exist apart from body and from the man himself who is, as it were, [60] a vessel for it - or if you choose you may picture it as something still more intimately linked, since body clings to mind by close ties.

Again, mind and body as a living force derive their vigor and their vitality from their conjunction. Without body, the mind alone cannot perform the vital motions. Bereft of vital spirit, the body cannot persist and exercise its senses. As the eye uprooted and separated from the body cannot see, so we perceive that spirit and mind by themselves are powerless. It is only because their atoms are held in by the whole body, intermingled through veins and flesh, sinews and bones, and are not free to bounce far apart, that they are kept together so as to perform the motions that generate sentience. After death, when they are expelled out of the body into the gusty air, they cannot perform the sensory motions because they are no longer  held together in the same way. The air indeed will itself be a body, [61] and an animate one at that, if it allows the vital spirit to hang together and keep up those motions which it used to go through before in the sinews and the body itself. Here then is proof upon proof. You must perforce admit that, when the whole bodily envelope crumbles after the expulsion of the vital breath, the senses of the mind and the spirit likewise disintegrate, since body and mind can only exist when joined together.

Again, the body cannot suffer the withdrawal of the vital spirit without rotting away in a foul stench. How can you doubt, then, but that the spirit diffused in the depths of the body has come to the surface and evaporated like smoke? [62] That explains why the body is transformed and collapses so utterly into decay: its inmost foundations are sapped by the effusion of the spirit through the limbs and through all the body's winding  channels and chinks. So there are many indications [63] that the vital spirit escapes through the limbs torn into pieces and is already split up within the body before it slips out and glides into the gusty air.

Even while the vital spirit yet lingers within the boundaries of life, it often seems, when something has violently upset it, as though it were struggling to escape and be wholly released from the body - as though the features were relaxing into a deathbed immobility and every limb were ready to hang limp upon the bloodless trunk. It is at such times that we say 'the mind has failed' or 'he has lost consciousness'. There is general alarm, and everyone is straining to hold fast onto life's last mooring. Then the mind and all the vital spirit are all churned up and both these, together with the body, are on the point of collapse, so that a slightly intensified force might shatter them. How can you doubt, then, that the fragile spirit once stripped of its envelope and thrust out of the body into the open would be powerless not only to survive throughout eternity but even to persist for a single instant?

No one on the point of death seems to feel his spirit retiring intact right out of his body or rising first to his gullet and up through his throat. On the contrary, he feels that it is failing in a particular region which it occupies, just as he is conscious that his other senses are being extinguished each in its own sphere. If our mind were indeed immortal, it would not complain of  extinction in the hour of death, but would rather feel that it was escaping from confinement and sloughing off its garment like a snake.

Again, why is mind or thought never born in head or feet or hands? Why does it cling fast in every man to one spot or a specified region? It can only be that a specific place is assigned to each thing where it can be born and survive. So every creature is created with a great diversity of members, whose mutual position is never reversed. One thing duly follows another: flame is not born in a flood, nor frost begotten in fire.

Moreover, if the spirit is by nature immortal and can remain sentient when divorced from our body, we must credit it, I presume, with the possession of five senses. In no other way can we picture to ourselves departed spirits wandering through the Infernal Regions. So it is that painters [64] and bygone generations of writers [65] have portrayed spirits in possession of their senses. But eyes or nostrils or hand or tongue or ears cannot be attached to a disembodied spirit. Such a spirit cannot therefore be sentient or so much as exist.

We feel that the sensation of living resides in the body as a whole and we see that the whole body is animate. Suppose, then, that it is suddenly sliced through the middle by some swiftly delivered slash, so as to fall into two quite  separate parts. Without doubt the vital spirit will also be severed and split in two along with the body. But what is cleft and falls apart obviously gives up all pretensions to be immortal. They say [66] that in the heat and indiscriminate carnage of battle limbs are often lopped off by scythe-armed chariots so suddenly that the fallen member hewn from the body is seen to writhe on the ground. Yet the mind and consciousness of the man cannot yet feel the pain: so abrupt is the hurt, and so intent the mind upon the business of battle. With what is left of his body he presses on with battle and bloodshed and does not grasp, it may be, that his left arm together with its shield has been lost, whirled away among the chargers by the chariot wheels with their predatory blades. Another does not notice that his right arm has gone, while he keeps struggling to climb aboard the chariot. [67] Another, who has lost a leg, does his best to stand up, while on the ground at his side the dying foot twitches its toes. A head hewn from the still warm and living trunk retains on the ground its lively features and open eyes till it has yielded up the last shred of spirit. Or take for example a snake with flickering tongue, menacing tail and protracted body. Should you choose to hack both ends of it in many pieces with a blade, you will see, while the wound is still fresh, every several portion separately squirming and spattering the  ground with gore, and the foremost part twisting back with its mouth to bite itself in the fierce agony of the wound. Shall we say that in each of these parts there is an entire spirit? But on that hypothesis it would follow that one animate creature had in its body many spirits. Actually, a spirit that was one has been split up along with the body. So both alike must be reckoned mortal, since both alike are split into many parts. [68]

Next, if the spirit is by nature immortal and is slipped into [69] the body at birth, why do we retain no memory [70] of an earlier existence, no traces left by antecedent events? If the mind's operation is so greatly changed that all record of former actions has been expunged, it is no long journey, in my judgment, from this experience to annihilation. So you must admit that the  pre-existent spirit has died and the one that is now is a new creation. [71]

Let us suppose, for argument's sake, that the vital force of mind is introduced into us when the body is already fully formed, at the moment when we are born and step across the threshold of life. This theory does not square with the observed fact that the mind grows with the bodily frame and in the very blood. It would imply that the mind lived in solitary confinement, [72] alone in its cell, and yet at the same time the whole body was overflowing with sensation. Here then is proof upon proof that spirits are not to be regarded as birthless, nor yet as exempt from the law of death. If they were slipped into our bodies from outside, it cannot be supposed that the two would be so closely interlocked as they are shown to be by the  clearest evidence. For spirit so interpenetrates veins, flesh, sinews, bones, that our very teeth share in sensation - witness toothache and the twinge of icy water or biting into a jagged stone buried in a loaf. Being thus interwoven, it does not seem possible that it should escape intact and extricate itself undamaged from every sinew, bone and joint. Or, if you suppose that, after being slipped in from outside, the spirit oozes through our limbs, then it is all the more bound to perish with the body through which it is thus interfused. To ooze through something is to be dissolved in it and therefore to perish. We know that food, when it is rationed out amongst our limbs and members by diffusion through all the channels of the body, is destroyed and takes on a different nature. Just so, on the assumption that spirit and mind enter into the newly formed body as complete entities, they must be dissolved in oozing through it: our limbs must be interpenetrated through every channel by the particles composing this mind which lords it now in our body - this new mind born of the old one that must have perished in its diffusion through our limbs. It is thus evident that the human spirit is neither deprived of a birthday nor immune from a funeral.

The further question arises whether or not any atoms of vital spirit are left in a lifeless body. If some are left and lodge there, we are not justified in regarding the spirit as immortal, since it has come away mutilated by the loss of some of its parts. If, on the other hand, it withdraws with its members intact, so that no scrap of it remains in the body, how is it that corpses, when their flesh begins to rot, exhale maggots? [73] What is the source of that boneless and bloodless horde of animate things that swarms through the swollen limbs? You may argue that spirits can slip into the maggots from outside and settle individually in their bodies. I will not ask why in that case many thousands of spirits should forgather in the place from which one has withdrawn. But there is another question that calls for a decisive answer. [74] Do these supposed spirits each hunt out atoms of maggots and manufacture dwelling-places for themselves? Or do they slip into ready-made bodies? No adequate reason can be given why they should undertake the labor of manufacture. In their bodiless state they presumably flit about untroubled by sickness, cold or hunger. For the body is far more subject to these afflictions, and communion with it is the source of many of the mind's troubles. But suppose they had the best of reasons for making a body to which they could subject themselves: there is no discernible way in which they could set about it. So much for the suggestion that spirits make bodies and limbs for themselves. We may equally rule out the alternative theory that they slip into ready-made bodies. For this would not account for the intimate communion between body and spirit and their sensory interaction.

Again, why is grim ferocity an attribute of the lions' surly breed, as craftiness of foxes? Why are deer endowed by their fathers [75] with timidity and their limbs impelled to flight by hereditary panic? Why are all other traits of this sort implanted in physique and character from birth? It can only be because the mind always shares in the specific growth of the body according to its seed and breed. If it were immortal and passed from body to body, there would be living things of confused characters. Often the hound of Hyrcanian [76] breed would turn tail before the onset of the antlered stag. The hawk would flee trembling through the gusty air at the coming of the dove. Man would be witless, and brute beasts rational. It is an untenable theory that an immortal spirit is modified by a change of body. For whatever changes is disintegrated and therefore destroyed. The component parts of spirits are in any case transposed and reshuffled. So the spirits as a whole might just as well be diffused through the limbs and eventually destroyed with the body. If, on the other hand, it is maintained that the spirits of men enter none but human bodies, then I would ask why a wise one should become foolish - why a child is never sensible, nor a mare's foal as accomplished as a sturdy steed. The one loophole left is the assumption that in a frail body the mind too grows frail. But in that case you must admit that the spirit is mortal, since in its adaptation to the bodily  frame it loses so  utterly its previous vitality and sensibility. How can the mind wax strong in unison with each particular body till it attains with it the coveted season of full bloom, unless the two are co-heirs of a single birth? Why, when the limbs are weighted with age, should the mind wish to slip out and away? Is it afraid to stay locked up in a moldering body? Afraid that its lodging may collapse from the wear and tear of age? Surely an immortal being need fear no danger. [77]

Again, it is surely ludicrous to suppose that spirits are standing by at the mating and birth of animals - a numberless number of immortals on the lookout for mortal frames, jostling and squabbling to get in first and establish themselves most firmly. Or is there perhaps an established compact that first come shall be first served, without any trial of strength between spirit and spirit?

A tree cannot exist high in air, or clouds in the depths of the sea, as fish cannot live in the fields, or blood flow in wood or sap in stones. [78] There is a determined and allotted place for the growth and place of everything. So mind cannot arise alone without body or apart from sinews and blood. If it could do this, then surely it could much more readily function in head or shoulders or the tips of the heels and be born in any other part, so long as it was held in the same container, that is to say in the same man. Since, however, even in the human body we see a determined and allotted place set aside for the growth and presence of spirit and mind, we have even stronger grounds for denying that they could survive or come to birth outside the body altogether. You must admit, therefore, that when the body has perished there is an end also of the spirit ripped to shreds throughout the body. It is surely crazy to couple a mortal object with an eternal and suppose that they can work in harmony and mutually interact. What can be imagined more incongruous, what more repugnant and discordant, than that a mortal object and one that is immortal and everlasting should unite to form a compound and jointly weather the storms that rage about them?

Again, [79] there can be only three kinds of everlasting objects. The first, owing to the absolute solidity of their substance, can repel blows and let nothing penetrate them so as to unknit their close texture from within. Such are the atoms of matter, whose nature I have already demonstrated. The second kind can last for ever because it is immune from blows. Such is empty space, which remains untouched and unaffected by any impact. Last is that which has no available place surrounding it into which its matter can disperse and disintegrate. It is for this reason that the sum totality of the universe is everlasting, having no space outside it into which the matter can escape and no matter that can enter and disintegrate it by the force of impact.

Equally vain is the suggestion that the spirit is immortal because it is shielded by life-preserving powers: or because it is unassailed by forces hostile to its survival; or because such forces, if they threaten, are somehow repelled before we are conscious of the threat. <Common sense makes it obvious that this cannot be the case:> apart from the spirit's participation in the ailments of the body, it has maladies enough of its own. [80] The prospect of the future torments it with fear and wearies it with worry, and past misdeeds leave the sting of remorse. Lastly, it may fall a prey to the mind's own specific afflictions, madness and amnesia, and plunge into the black waters of oblivion.

From all this it follows that death is nothing to us [81]and no concern of ours, since the nature of the mind is now held to be mortal. In days of old, we felt no disquiet when the hosts of Carthage [82] poured in to battle on every side - when the whole earth, dizzied by the convulsive shock of war, reeled sickeningly under the high ethereal vault, and between realm and realm the empire of mankind by land and sea trembled in the balance. So, when we shall be no more - when the union of body and spirit that engenders us [83] has been disrupted - to us, who shall then be nothing, nothing by any hazard will happen any more at all. Nothing will have power to stir our senses, not though earth be fused with sea and sea with sky.

If any feeling remains in mind or spirit after it has been torn from our body, that is nothing to us, who are brought into being by the wedlock of body and spirit, conjoined and coalesced. Or even if the matter that composes us should be reassembled by time after our death and brought back into its present state - if the light of life were given to us anew [84] - even that contingency would still be no concern of ours once the chain of our identity had been snapped. We who are now are not concerned with ourselves in any previous existence: the sufferings of those selves do not touch us. When you look at the immeasurable extent of time gone by and the multiform movements of matter, you will readily credit that these same atoms that  compose us now must many a time before have entered into the selfsame combinations as now. [85] But our mind cannot recall this to remembrance. For between then and now is interposed a break in life, and all the atomic motions have been wandering far astray from sentience.

If the future holds misery and anguish in store, the self must be in existence, when that time comes, in order to be miserable. But from this fate we are redeemed by death, which denies existence to the self that might have suffered these tribulations. Rest assured, therefore, that we have nothing to fear in death. One who no longer is cannot suffer, or differ in any way from one who has never been born, when once this mortal life has been usurped by death the immortal.

When you find a man treating it as a grievance that after death he will either molder in the grave or fall a prey to flames or to the jaws of predatory beasts, [86] be sure that his utterance does not ring true. Subconsciously his heart is stabbed by a secret dread, however loudly the man himself may disavow the belief that after death he will still experience sensation. I am convinced that he does not grant the admission he professes, nor the grounds of it; he does not oust and pluck himself root and branch out of life, but all unwittingly makes something of himself linger on. When a living man confronts the thought that after death his body will be mauled by birds and beasts of prey, [87] he is filled with self-pity. He does not banish himself from the scene nor distinguish sharply enough between himself and that abandoned carcass. He visualizes that object as himself and infects it with his own feelings as an onlooker. That is why he is aggrieved at having been created mortal. He does not see that in real death there will be no other self alive to mourn his own decease - no other self standing by to flinch at the agony he suffers lying there being mangled, or indeed being cremated. For if it is really a bad thing after death to be mauled and crunched by ravening jaws, I cannot see why it should not be disagreeable to roast in the scorching flames of a funeral pyre, or to lie embalmed in honey, [88] stifled and stiff with cold, on the surface of a chilly slab, or to be squashed under a crushing weight of earth.

'Now it is all over. Now [89] the happy home and the best of wives will welcome you no more, nor delightful children rush to snatch the first kiss at your coming and touch your heart with speechless joy. No chance now to further your fortune or safeguard your family. Unhappy man,' they cry, 'unhappily cheated by one treacherous day out of all these blessings of life!' But they do not go on to say: 'And now no repining for these lost joys will oppress you any more.' If they perceived this clearly with their minds and acted according to the words, they would free their breasts from a great load of grief and dread.

'Ah yes! You are at peace now in the sleep of death, and so you will stay till the end of time. Pain and sorrow will never touch you again. But to us, who stood weeping inconsolably while you were consumed to ashes on the  dreadful pyre - to us no day will come that will lift the undying sorrow from our hearts.' Ask the speaker, then, what is so heart-rending about this. If something returns to sleep and peace, what reason is that for pining in inconsolable grief?

Here again, is the way men often talk from the bottom of their hearts when they recline at a banquet, [90] goblet in hand and brows decked with garlands: 'How all too short are these good times that come to us poor creatures! Soon they will be past and gone, and there will be no recalling them.' You would think the crowning calamity in store for them after death was to be parched and shriveled by a tormenting thirst or oppressed by some other vain desire. But even in sleep, when mind and body alike are at rest, no one misses himself or sighs for life. If such sleep were prolonged to eternity, no longing for ourselves would trouble us. And yet the vital atoms in our limbs cannot be far removed from their sensory motions at a time when a  mere jolt out of sleep enables a man to pull himself together. Death,  therefore, must be regarded, so far as we are concerned, as having much less existence than sleep, if anything can have less existence than what we perceive to be nothing. For death is followed by a far greater dispersal of the seething mass of matter: once that icy break in life has intervened, there is no more waking.

Suppose that Nature [91] herself were suddenly to find a voice and round upon one of us in these terms: 'What is your grievance, mortal, that you give  yourself up to this whining and repining? Why do you weep and wail over death? If the life you have lived till now has been a pleasant thing - if all its blessings have not leaked away like water poured into a cracked pot [92] and run to waste unrelished - why then, you stupid man, do you not retire like a dinner guest who has eaten his fill of life, and take your carefree rest with a quiet mind? Or, if all your gains have been poured profitless away and life has grown distasteful, why do you seek to swell the total? The new can but turn out as badly as the old and perish as unprofitably. Why not rather make an end of life and trouble? [93] Do you expect me to invent some new contrivance for your pleasure? I tell you, there is none. All things are always the same. If your body is not yet withered with age, nor your limbs decrepit and flagging, [94] even so there is nothing new to look forward to - not though you should outlive all living creatures, or even though you should never die at all.'  What are we to answer, except that Nature's rebuttal is justified and the plea she puts forward is a true one?

But suppose it is some man of riper years who complains - some dismal greybeard who laments over his approaching end far more than he ought. Would she not have every right to protest more vehemently and repulse him in stern tones: 'Away with your tears, old reprobate! Have done with your grumbling! You are withering now after tasting all the joys of life. But  because you are always pining for what is not and unappreciative of the things at hand, your life has slipped away unfulfilled and unprized. Death has stolen upon you unawares, before you are ready to retire from life's banquet filled and satisfied. Come now, put away all that is unbecoming to your years and compose your mind to make way for others. You have no  choice.' I cannot question but that she would have right on her side; her censure and rebuke would be well merited. The old is always thrust aside to make way for the new, and one thing must be built out of the wreck of others. There is no murky pit of Tartarus awaiting anyone. There is need of matter, so that later generations may arise; when they have lived out their span, they will all follow you. Bygone generations have taken your road, and those to come will take it no less. So one thing will never cease to spring from another. To none is life given in freehold; to all on lease. [95] Look back at the eternity that passed before we were born, and mark how utterly it counts to us as nothing. This is a mirror that Nature holds up to us, in which we may see the time that shall be after we are dead. Is there anything terrifying in the sight - anything depressing - anything that is not more restful than the soundest sleep?

As for all those torments that are said to take place in the depths of Acheron, they are actually present here and now, in our own lives.

There is no wretched Tantalus, [96] as the myth relates, transfixed with groundless terror at the huge boulder poised above him in the air. But in this life there really are mortals oppressed by unfounded fear of the gods and trembling at the impending doom that may fall upon any of them at the whim of chance.

There is no Tityos [97] lying in Acheron for ever opened up by birds of prey. Assuredly they cannot find food by groping under those giant ribs to glut them throughout eternity. No matter to what length that titanic frame may lie outstretched, so that he covers not a paltry nine acres with his spread-eagled limbs but the whole extent of earth, he will not be able to suffer an eternity of pain nor furnish food from his body for evermore. But Tityos is here in our midst - that poor devil prostrated by love, torn indeed by birds of prey, devoured by gnawing anxiety or rent by the fangs of some other passion.

Sisyphus [98] too is alive for all to see, bent on winning the insignia of office, its rods and ruthless axes, by the people's vote, and is embittered by perpetual defeat. To strive for this profitless and never-granted prize, and in striving toil and moil incessantly, this truly is to push a boulder laboriously up a steep hill, only to see it, once the top is reached, rolling and bounding down again to the flat levels of the plain.

By the same token, to be for ever feeding a malcontent mind, filling it with good things but never satisfying it - the fate we suffer when the circling seasons enrich us with their products and their ever-changing charms although we are never filled with the fruits of life - this surely exemplifies the story of those maidens [99] in the flower of life for ever pouring water into a leaking vessel that can never by any technique be filled.

As for Cerberus [100] and the Furies [101] and the pitchy darkness and Tartarus [102] belching abominable fumes from its throat, these do not and cannot exist anywhere at all. But life is darkened by the fear of retribution for our misdeeds, a fear enormous in proportion to their enormity, and by the penalties imposed for crime - imprisonment and ghastly precipitation from Tarpeia's Crag, [103] the lash, the executioners, the condemned cell, the boiling pitch, the hot metal plates and the branding torches. Even though these horrors are not physically present, yet the conscience-ridden mind in terrified anticipation torments itself with its own goads and whips. It does not see what term there can be to its suffering nor where its punishment can have an end. It is afraid that death may serve merely to intensify all this pain. So at length the life of misguided mortals becomes a Hell on earth.

Here is something that you might well say to yourself from time to time: 'Even good king Ancus [104] looked his last on the daylight - a better man than you, my presumptuous friend, by a long reckoning. Death has come to many another monarch and potentate, who ruled over mighty nations. Even that King  of Kings [105] who once built a highway across the great deep - who gave his legions a path to tread among the waves and taught them to march on foot over the briny gulfs and with his chargers trampled scornfully upon the ocean's roar - even he was robbed of the light and poured out the spirit from a dying frame. Scipio,[106] that thunderbolt of war, the terror of Carthage, gave his bones to the earth as if he had been the meanest of serfs. Add to this company the discoverers of truth and beauty. Add the attendants of the Muses, among them Homer,[107] who in solitary glory bore the scepter but has sunk into the same slumber as the rest. Democritus, [108] when ripe age warned him that the mindful motions of his intellect were running down, made his unbowed head a willing sacrifice to death.   And the master himself, when his daylit race was run, Epicurus [109] himself died, whose genius outshone the race of men and dimmed them all, as the stars are dimmed by the rising of the fiery sun. And will you kick and protest against your sentence? You, whose life is next-door to death although you still live and look on the light. You, who waste the major part of your time in sleep and, when you are awake, are snoring still and dreaming. You, who bear a mind hag-ridden by baseless fear and cannot find the commonest cause of your distress, hounded as you are, pathetic creature, by a pack of troubles and drifting in a drunken stupor upon a wavering tide of fantasy.'

Men feel plainly enough within their minds a heavy burden, whose weight depresses them. If only they perceived with equal clearness the causes of this depression, the origin of this lump of evil within their breasts, they would not lead such a life as we now see all too commonly - no one knowing what he really wants and everyone for ever trying to get away from where he is, as though travel alone could throw off the load. [110] Often the owner of some stately mansion, [111] bored stiff by staying at home, takes his departure, only to return as speedily when he feels himself no better off out of doors. Off he goes to his country seat, driving his Gaulish ponies hotfoot, as though rushing to save a house on fire. No sooner has he crossed its doorstep than he starts yawning or retires moodily to sleep and courts oblivion, or else rushes back to revisit the city. In so doing the individual is really running away from himself. [112] Since he remains reluctantly wedded to the self whom he cannot of course escape, he grows to hate him, because he is a sick man ignorant of the cause of his malady. If he did but see this, he would cast other thoughts aside and devote himself first to studying the nature of the universe. It is not the fortune of an hour that is in question, but of all time - the lot in store for mortals throughout the eternity that awaits them after death.

What is this deplorable lust for life that holds us trembling in bondage to such uncertainties and dangers? A fixed term is set to the life of mortals, and there is no way of dodging death. In any case the setting of our lives  remains the same throughout, and by going on living we do not mint any new coin of pleasure. So long as the object of our craving is unattained, it seems more precious than anything besides. Once it is ours, we crave for something else. So an unquenchable thirst for life keeps us always on the gasp. There is no telling what fortune the future may bring - what chance may throw in our way, or what upshot lies in waiting. By prolonging life, we cannot subtract or whittle away one jot from the duration of our death. The time after our taking off remains constant. However many generations you may add to your store by living, there waits for you none the less the same eternal death. [113] The period of not-being will be no less for him who made an end of life with today's daylight than for him who perished many a moon and many a year before.

Go to Next Page