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

Shaken profoundly through the frame entire,

Undoes the vital knots of soul from body

And throws that soul, to outward wide-dispersed,

Through all the pores. For what may we surmise

A blow inflicted can achieve besides

Shaking asunder and loosening all apart?

It happens also, when less sharp the blow,

The vital motions which are left are wont

Oft to win out—win out, and stop and still

The uncouth tumults gendered by the blow,

And call each part to its own courses back,

And shake away the motion of death which now

Begins its own dominion in the body,

And kindle anew the senses almost gone.

For by what other means could they the more

Collect their powers of thought and turn again

From very doorways of destruction

Back unto life, rather than pass whereto

They be already well-nigh sped and so

Pass quite away?

Again, since pain is there

Where bodies of matter, by some force stirred up,

Through vitals and through joints, within their seats

Quiver and quake inside, but soft delight,

When they remove unto their place again:

'Tis thine to know the primal germs can be

Assaulted by no pain, nor from themselves

Take no delight; because indeed they are

Not made of any bodies of first things,

Under whose strange new motions they might ache

Or pluck the fruit of any dear new sweet.

And so they must be furnished with no sense.

Once more, if thus, that every living thing

May have sensation, needful 'tis to assign

Sense also to its elements, what then

Of those fixed elements from which mankind

Hath been, by their peculiar virtue, formed?

Of verity, they'll laugh aloud, like men,

Shaken asunder by a spasm of mirth,

Or sprinkle with dewy tear-drops cheeks and chins,

And have the cunning hardihood to say

Much on the composition of the world,

And in their turn inquire what elements

They have themselves,—since, thus the same in kind

As a whole mortal creature, even they

Must also be from other elements,

And then those others from others evermore—

So that thou darest nowhere make a stop.

Oho, I'll follow thee until thou grant

The seed (which here thou say'st speaks, laughs, and

thinks)

Is yet derived out of other seeds

Which in their turn are doing just the same.

But if we see what raving nonsense this,

And that a man may laugh, though not, forsooth,

Compounded out of laughing elements,

And think and utter reason with learn'd speech,

Though not himself compounded, for a fact,

Of sapient seeds and eloquent, why, then,

Cannot those things which we perceive to have

Their own sensation be composed as well

Of intermixed seeds quite void of sense?

Table of Contents

Once more, we all from seed celestial spring,

To all is that same father, from whom earth,

The fostering mother, as she takes the drops

Of liquid moisture, pregnant bears her broods—

The shining grains, and gladsome shrubs and trees,

And bears the human race and of the wild

The generations all, the while she yields

The foods wherewith all feed their frames and lead

The genial life and propagate their kind;

Wherefore she owneth that maternal name,

By old desert. What was before from earth,

The same in earth sinks back, and what was sent

From shores of ether, that, returning home,

The vaults of sky receive. Nor thus doth death

So far annihilate things that she destroys

The bodies of matter; but she dissipates

Their combinations, and conjoins anew

One element with others; and contrives

That all things vary forms and change their colours

And get sensations and straight give them o'er.

And thus may'st know it matters with what others

And in what structure the primordial germs

Are held together, and what motions they

Among themselves do give and get; nor think

That aught we see hither and thither afloat

Upon the crest of things, and now a birth

And straightway now a ruin, inheres at rest

Deep in the eternal atoms of the world.

Why, even in these our very verses here

It matters much with what and in what order

Each element is set: the same denote

Sky, and the ocean, lands, and streams, and sun;

The same, the grains, and trees, and living things.

And if not all alike, at least the most—

But what distinctions by positions wrought!

And thus no less in things themselves, when once

Around are changed the intervals between,

The paths of matter, its connections, weights,

Blows, clashings, motions, order, structure, shapes,

The things themselves must likewise changed be.

Now to true reason give thy mind for us.

Since here strange truth is putting forth its might

To hit thee in thine ears, a new aspect

Of things to show its front. Yet naught there is

So easy that it standeth not at first

More hard to credit than it after is;

And naught soe'er that's great to such degree,

Nor wonderful so far, but all mankind

Little by little abandon their surprise.

Look upward yonder at the bright clear sky

And what it holds—the stars that wander o'er,

The moon, the radiance of the splendour-sun:

Yet all, if now they first for mortals were,

If unforeseen now first asudden shown,

What might there be more wonderful to tell,

What that the nations would before have dared

Less to believe might be?—I fancy, naught—

So strange had been the marvel of that sight.

The which o'erwearied to behold, to-day

None deigns look upward to those lucent realms.

Then, spew not reason from thy mind away,

Beside thyself because the matter's new,

But rather with keen judgment nicely weigh;

And if to thee it then appeareth true,

Render thy hands, or, if 'tis false at last,

Gird thee to combat. For my mind-of-man

Now seeks the nature of the vast Beyond

There on the other side, that boundless sum

Which lies without the ramparts of the world,

Toward which the spirit longs to peer afar,

Toward which indeed the swift elan of thought

Flies unencumbered forth.

Firstly, we find,

Off to all regions round, on either side,

Above, beneath, throughout the universe

End is there none—as I have taught, as too

The very thing of itself declares aloud,

And as from nature of the unbottomed deep

Shines clearly forth. Nor can we once suppose

In any way 'tis likely, (seeing that space

To all sides stretches infinite and free,

And seeds, innumerable in number, in sum

Bottomless, there in many a manner fly,

Bestirred in everlasting motion there),

That only this one earth and sky of ours

Hath been create and that those bodies of stuff,

So many, perform no work outside the same;

Seeing, moreover, this world too hath been

By nature fashioned, even as seeds of things

By innate motion chanced to clash and cling—

After they'd been in many a manner driven

Together at random, without design, in vain—

And as at last those seeds together dwelt,

Which, when together of a sudden thrown,

Should alway furnish the commencements fit

Of mighty things—the earth, the sea, the sky,

And race of living creatures. Thus, I say,

Again, again, 'tmust be confessed there are

Such congregations of matter otherwhere,

Like this our world which vasty ether holds

In huge embrace.

Besides, when matter abundant