Lucius Seneca - Yale Required Reading - Collected Works (Vol. 2)

Are not those objects which are of them made

Suffused, each kind with colours of every kind?

For then 'twere meet that ravens, as they fly,

Should dartle from white pinions a white sheen,

Or swans turn black from seed of black, or be

Of any single varied dye thou wilt.

Again, the more an object's rent to bits,

The more thou see its colour fade away

Little by little till 'tis quite extinct;

As happens when the gaudy linen's picked

Shred after shred away: the purple there,

Phoenician red, most brilliant of all dyes,

Is lost asunder, ravelled thread by thread;

Hence canst perceive the fragments die away

From out their colour, long ere they depart

Back to the old primordials of things.

And, last, since thou concedest not all bodies

Send out a voice or smell, it happens thus

That not to all thou givest sounds and smells.

So, too, since we behold not all with eyes,

'Tis thine to know some things there are as much

Orphaned of colour, as others without smell,

And reft of sound; and those the mind alert

No less can apprehend than it can mark

The things that lack some other qualities.

But think not haply that the primal bodies

Remain despoiled alone of colour: so,

Are they from warmth dissevered and from cold

And from hot exhalations; and they move,

Both sterile of sound and dry of juice; and throw

Not any odour from their proper bodies.

Just as, when undertaking to prepare

A liquid balm of myrrh and marjoram,

And flower of nard, which to our nostrils breathes

Odour of nectar, first of all behooves

Thou seek, as far as find thou may and can,

The inodorous olive-oil (which never sends

One whiff of scent to nostrils), that it may

The least debauch and ruin with sharp tang

The odorous essence with its body mixed

And in it seethed. And on the same account

The primal germs of things must not be thought

To furnish colour in begetting things,

Nor sound, since pow'rless they to send forth aught

From out themselves, nor any flavour, too,

Nor cold, nor exhalation hot or warm.

The rest; yet since these things are mortal all—

The pliant mortal, with a body soft;

The brittle mortal, with a crumbling frame;

The hollow with a porous-all must be

Disjoined from the primal elements,

If still we wish under the world to lay

Immortal ground-works, whereupon may rest

The sum of weal and safety, lest for thee

All things return to nothing utterly.

Now, too: whate'er we see possessing sense

Must yet confessedly be stablished all

From elements insensate. And those signs,

So clear to all and witnessed out of hand,

Do not refute this dictum nor oppose;

But rather themselves do lead us by the hand,

Compelling belief that living things are born

Of elements insensate, as I say.

Sooth, we may see from out the stinking dung

Live worms spring up, when, after soaking rains,

The drenched earth rots; and all things change the same:

Lo, change the rivers, the fronds, the gladsome pastures

Into the cattle, the cattle their nature change

Into our bodies, and from our body, oft

Grow strong the powers and bodies of wild beasts

And mighty-winged birds. Thus nature changes

All foods to living frames, and procreates

From them the senses of live creatures all,

In manner about as she uncoils in flames

Dry logs of wood and turns them all to fire.

And seest not, therefore, how it matters much

After what order are set the primal germs,

And with what other germs they all are mixed,

And what the motions that they give and get?

But now, what is't that strikes thy sceptic mind,

Constraining thee to sundry arguments

Against belief that from insensate germs

The sensible is gendered?—Verily,

'Tis this: that liquids, earth, and wood, though mixed,

Are yet unable to gender vital sense.

And, therefore, 'twill be well in these affairs

This to remember: that I have not said

Senses are born, under conditions all,

From all things absolutely which create

Objects that feel; but much it matters here

Firstly, how small the seeds which thus compose

The feeling thing, then, with what shapes endowed,

And lastly what they in positions be,

In motions, in arrangements. Of which facts

Naught we perceive in logs of wood and clods;

And yet even these, when sodden by the rains,

Give birth to wormy grubs, because the bodies

Of matter, from their old arrangements stirred

By the new factor, then combine anew

In such a way as genders living things.

Next, they who deem that feeling objects can

From feeling objects be create, and these,

In turn, from others that are wont to feel

When soft they make them; for all sense is linked

With flesh, and thews, and veins—and such, we see,

Are fashioned soft and of a mortal frame.

Yet be't that these can last forever on:

They'll have the sense that's proper to a part,

Or else be judged to have a sense the same

As that within live creatures as a whole.

But of themselves those parts can never feel,

For all the sense in every member back

To something else refers—a severed hand,

Or any other member of our frame,

Itself alone cannot support sensation.

It thus remains they must resemble, then,

Live creatures as a whole, to have the power

Of feeling sensation concordant in each part

With the vital sense; and so they're bound to feel

The things we feel exactly as do we.

If such the case, how, then, can they be named

The primal germs of things, and how avoid

The highways of destruction?—since they be

Mere living things and living things be all

One and the same with mortal. Grant they could,

Yet by their meetings and their unions all,

Naught would result, indeed, besides a throng

And hurly-burly all of living things—

Precisely as men, and cattle, and wild beasts,

By mere conglomeration each with each

Can still beget not anything of new.

But if by chance they lose, inside a body,

Their own sense and another sense take on,

What, then, avails it to assign them that

Which is withdrawn thereafter? And besides,

To touch on proof that we pronounced before,

Just as we see the eggs of feathered fowls

To change to living chicks, and swarming worms

To bubble forth when from the soaking rains

The earth is sodden, sure, sensations all

Can out of non-sensations be begot.

But if one say that sense can so far rise

From non-sense by mutation, or because

Brought forth as by a certain sort of birth,

'Twill serve to render plain to him and prove

There is no birth, unless there be before

Some formed union of the elements,

Nor any change, unless they be unite.

In first place, senses can't in body be

Before its living nature's been begot,—

Since all its stuff, in faith, is held dispersed

About through rivers, air, and earth, and all

That is from earth created, nor has met

In combination, and, in proper mode,

Conjoined into those vital motions which

Kindle the all-perceiving senses—they

That keep and guard each living thing soever.

Again, a blow beyond its nature's strength

Shatters forthwith each living thing soe'er,

And on it goes confounding all the sense

Of body and mind. For of the primal germs

Are loosed their old arrangements, and, throughout,

The vital motions blocked,—until the stuff,