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.
