De Rerum Natura

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Which is withdrawn thereafter?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,

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