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

From all of them one nature be produced,

Lest heat and wind apart, and air apart,

Make sense to perish, by disseverment.

There is indeed in mind that heat it gets

When seething in rage, and flashes from the eyes

More swiftly fire; there is, again, that wind,

Much, and so cold, companion of all dread,

Which rouses the shudder in the shaken frame;

There is no less that state of air composed,

Making the tranquil breast, the serene face.

But more of hot have they whose restive hearts,

Whose minds of passion quickly seethe in rage—

Of which kind chief are fierce abounding lions,

Who often with roaring burst the breast o'erwrought,

Unable to hold the surging wrath within;

But the cold mind of stags has more of wind,

And speedier through their inwards rouses up

The icy currents which make their members quake.

But more the oxen live by tranquil air,

Nor e'er doth smoky torch of wrath applied,

O'erspreading with shadows of a darkling murk,

Rouse them too far; nor will they stiffen stark,

Pierced through by icy javelins of fear;

But have their place half-way between the two—

Stags and fierce lions. Thus the race of men:

Though training make them equally refined,

It leaves those pristine vestiges behind

Of each mind's nature. Nor may we suppose

Evil can e'er be rooted up so far

That one man's not more given to fits of wrath,

Another's not more quickly touched by fear,

A third not more long-suffering than he should.

And needs must differ in many things besides

The varied natures and resulting habits

Of humankind—of which not now can I

Expound the hidden causes, nor find names

Enough for all the divers shapes of those

Primordials whence this variation springs.

But this meseems I'm able to declare:

Those vestiges of natures left behind

Which reason cannot quite expel from us

Are still so slight that naught prevents a man

From living a life even worthy of the gods.

So then this soul is kept by all the body,

Itself the body's guard, and source of weal:

For they with common roots cleave each to each,

Nor can be torn asunder without death.

Not easy 'tis from lumps of frankincense

To tear their fragrance forth, without its nature

Perishing likewise: so, not easy 'tis

From all the body nature of mind and soul

To draw away, without the whole dissolved.

With seeds so intertwined even from birth,

They're dowered conjointly with a partner-life;

No energy of body or mind, apart,

Each of itself without the other's power,

Can have sensation; but our sense, enkindled

Along the vitals, to flame is blown by both

With mutual motions. Besides the body alone

Is nor begot nor grows, nor after death

Seen to endure. For not as water at times

Gives off the alien heat, nor is thereby

Itself destroyed, but unimpaired remains—

Not thus, I say, can the deserted frame

Bear the dissevering of its joined soul,

But, rent and ruined, moulders all away.

Thus the joint contact of the body and soul

Learns from their earliest age the vital motions,

Even when still buried in the mother's womb;

So no dissevering can hap to them,

Without their bane and ill. And thence mayst see

That, as conjoined is their source of weal,

Conjoined also must their nature be.

If one, moreover, denies that body feel,

And holds that soul, through all the body mixed,

Takes on this motion which we title "sense,"

He battles in vain indubitable facts:

For who'll explain what body's feeling is,

Except by what the public fact itself

Has given and taught us?"But when soul is parted,

Body's without all sense." True!—loses what

Was even in its life-time not its own;

And much beside it loses, when soul's driven

Forth from that life-time. Or, to say that eyes

Themselves can see no thing, but through the same

The mind looks forth, as out of opened doors,

Is—a hard saying; since the feel in eyes

Says the reverse. For this itself draws on

And forces into the pupils of our eyes

Our consciousness. And note the case when often

We lack the power to see refulgent things,

Because our eyes are hampered by their light—

With a mere doorway this would happen not;

For, since it is our very selves that see,

No open portals undertake the toil.

Besides, if eyes of ours but act as doors,

Methinks that, were our sight removed, the mind

Ought then still better to behold a thing—

When even the door-posts have been cleared away.

Herein in these affairs nowise take up

What honoured sage, Democritus, lays down—

That proposition, that primordials

Of body and mind, each super-posed on each,

Vary alternately and interweave

The fabric of our members. For not only

Are the soul-elements smaller far than those

Which this our body and inward parts compose,

But also are they in their number less,

And scattered sparsely through our frame. And thus

This canst thou guarantee: soul's primal germs

Maintain between them intervals as large

At least as are the smallest bodies, which,

When thrown against us, in our body rouse

Sense-bearing motions. Hence it comes that we

Sometimes don't feel alighting on our frames

The clinging dust, or chalk that settles soft;

Nor mists of night, nor spider's gossamer

We feel against us, when, upon our road,

Its net entangles us, nor on our head

The dropping of its withered garmentings;

Nor bird-feathers, nor vegetable down,

Flying about, so light they barely fall;

Nor feel the steps of every crawling thing,

Nor each of all those footprints on our skin

Of midges and the like. To that degree

Must many primal germs be stirred in us

Ere once the seeds of soul that through our frame

Are intermingled 'gin to feel that those

Primordials of the body have been strook,

And ere, in pounding with such gaps between,

They clash, combine and leap apart in turn.

But mind is more the keeper of the gates,

Hath more dominion over life than soul.

For without intellect and mind there's not

One part of soul can rest within our frame

Least part of time; companioning, it goes

With mind into the winds away, and leaves

The icy members in the cold of death.

But he whose mind and intellect abide

Himself abides in life. However much

The trunk be mangled, with the limbs lopped off,

The soul withdrawn and taken from the limbs,

Still lives the trunk and draws the vital air.

Even when deprived of all but all the soul,

Yet will it linger on and cleave to life,—

Just as the power of vision still is strong,

If but the pupil shall abide unharmed,

Even when the eye around it's sorely rent—

Provided only thou destroyest not

Wholly the ball, but, cutting round the pupil,

Leavest that pupil by itself behind—

For more would ruin sight. But if that centre,

That tiny part of eye, be eaten through,

Forthwith the vision fails and darkness comes,

Though in all else the unblemished ball be clear.

'Tis by like compact that the soul and mind

Are each to other bound forevermore.

Table of Contents

Now come: that thou mayst able be to know

That minds and the light souls of all that live

Have mortal birth and death, I will go on

Verses to build meet for thy rule of life,