of the nature of things-第21章
按键盘上方向键 ← 或 → 可快速上下翻页,按键盘上的 Enter 键可回到本书目录页,按键盘上方向键 ↑ 可回到本页顶部!
————未阅读完?加入书签已便下次继续阅读!
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;
。 。 。 。 。 。
For; lo; besides that; when the frame's diseased;
Soul sickens too; there cometh; many a time;
That which torments it with the things to be;
Keeps it in dread; and wearies it with cares;
And even when evil acts are of the past;
Still gnaw the old transgressions bitterly。
Add; too; that frenzy; peculiar to the mind;
And that oblivion of the things that were;
Add its submergence in the murky waves
Of drowse and torpor。
FOLLY OF THE FEAR OF DEATH
Therefore death to us
Is nothing; nor concerns us in the least;
Since nature of mind is mortal evermore。
And just as in the ages gone before
We felt no touch of ill; when all sides round
To battle came the Carthaginian host;
And the times; shaken by tumultuous war;
Under the aery coasts of arching heaven
Shuddered and trembled; and all humankind
Doubted to which the empery should fall
By land and sea; thus when we are no more;
When comes that sundering of our body and soul
Through which we're fashioned to a single state;
Verily naught to us; us then no more;
Can come to pass; naught move our senses then…
No; not if earth confounded were with sea;
And sea with