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this fire, this highly refined matter, is as devoid of the faculty of thinking as a stone. The production of a being must have something similar to that which produced it; but thought, will, and perception have nothing similar to fiery matter.
LUCRETIUS.—Two bodies, struck against each other, produce motion, and yet this motion has nothing similar to the two bodies; it has none of their three dimensions, nor has it any figure. A being, therefore, may have nothing similar to that which produced it, and, in consequence, thought may spring from an assemblage of two bodies which have no thought.
POSIDONIUS.—This comparison likewise is more specious than just. I see nothing but matter in two bodies in motion: I only see bodies passing from one place to another. But when we reason together I see no matter in your ideas, or in my own. I shall only observe that I can no more conceive how one body has the power of moving another, than I can comprehend the manner of my having ideas. To me both are equally inexplicable, and both equally prove the existence and the power of a Supreme Being, the author of thought and motion.
LUCRETIUS.—If our soul is not a subtile fire, an ethereal quintessence, what is it?
POSIDONIUS.—Neither you nor I know aught of the matter. I will tell you plainly what it is not; but I cannot tell you what it actually is. I see that it is a power lodged in my body; that I did not give myself this power; and, in consequence, that it must have come from a Being superior to myself.
LUCRETIUS.—You did not give yourself life; you received it from your father; from whom, likewise, together with life, you received the faculty of thinking, as he had received both from his father, and so on backwards to infinity. You no more know the true principle of life than you do that of thought. This succession of living and thinking beings has always existed.
POSIDONIUS.—I plainly see that you are always obliged to abandon the system of Epicurus, and that you dare no longer maintain that the declination of atoms produced thought. I have already, in our last colloquy, refuted the eternal succession of sensible and thinking beings. I showed you that, if there are material beings capable of thinking by their own power, thought must necessarily be an attribute essential to all matter; that, if matter thought necessarily, and by its own virtue, all matter must of course think: but this is not the case, and therefore it is impossible to maintain a succession of material beings, who, of themselves, possess the faculty of thinking.
LUCRETIUS.—Notwithstanding this reasoning, which you repeat, it is certain that a father communicates a soul to his son at the same time that he forms his body. This soul and this body grow together; they gradually acquire strength; they are subject to calamities, and to the infirmities of old age. The decay of our strength draws along with it that of our judgment; the effect at last ceases with the cause, and the soul vanishes like smoke into air.
Præterea, gigni pariter cum corpore, & una Crescere sentimus, pariterque senescere mentem. Nam velet infirmo pueri, teneroque vagantur Corpore, sic animi sequitur sententia tenuis. Inde ubi robustis adolevit viribus ætas, Consilium quoque majus, & auctior est animi vis. Post ubi jam validis quassatum est viribus ævi Corpus, & obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus: Claudicat ingenium delirat linguaque, mensque; Omnia deficiunt, atque uno tempore desunt, Ergo dissolvi quoque convenit omnem animai Naturam, ceu fumus in altas aeris auras: Quandoquidem gigni pariter, pariterque videmus Crescere, & (ut docui) simul ævo fessa fatiscit.
Besides, ’tis plain that souls are born, and grow;
And all by age decay, as bodies do;
To prove this truth: in infants, minds appear
Infirm, and tender as their bodies are:
In man, the mind is strong; when age prevails,
And the quick vigor of each member fails,
The mind’s powers, too, decrease, and waste apace;
And grave and reverend folly takes the place.
’Tis likely then the soul and mind must die;
Like smoke in air, its scattered atoms fly;
Since all these proofs have shown, these reasons told,
’Tis with the body born, grows strong, and old.
—CREECH.
POSIDONIUS.—These, to be sure, are very fine verses; but do you thereby inform me of the nature of the soul?
LUCRETIUS.—No; I only give you its history, and I reason with probability.
POSIDONIUS.—Where is the probability of a father’s communicating to his son the faculty of thinking?
LUCRETIUS.—Do you not daily see children resembling their fathers in their inclinations, as well as in their features?
POSIDONIUS.—But does not a father, in begetting his son, act as a blind agent? Does he pretend, when he enjoys his wife, to make a soul, or to make thoughts? Do either of them know the manner in which a child is formed in the mother’s womb? Must we not, in this case, have recourse to a superior cause, as well as in all the other operations of nature which we have examined? Must you not see, if you are in earnest, that men give themselves nothing, but are under the hand of an absolute master?
LUCRETIUS.—If you know more of the matter than I do, tell me what the soul is.
POSIDONIUS.—I do not pretend to know what it is more than you. Let us endeavor to enlighten each other. Tell me, first, what is vegetation.
LUCRETIUS.—It is an internal motion, that carries the moisture of the earth into plants, makes them grow, unfolds their fruits, expands their leaves, etc.
POSIDONIUS.—Surely you do not think that there is a being called Vegetation that performs these wonders?
LUCRETIUS.—Who ever thought so?
POSIDONIUS.—From our former colloquy you ought to conclude that the tree did not give vegetation to itself.
LUCRETIUS.—I am forced to allow it.
POSIDONIUS.—Tell me next what life is.
LUCRETIUS.—It is vegetation joined with perception in an organized body.
POSIDONIUS.—And is there not a being called life, that gives perception to an organized body?
LUCRETIUS.—Doubtless vegetation and life are words which signify things that live and vegetate.
POSIDONIUS.—If a tree and an animal cannot give themselves life and vegetation, can you give yourself thoughts?
LUCRETIUS.—I think I can, for I think of whatever I please. My intention was to converse with you about metaphysics, and I have done so.
POSIDONIUS.—You think that you are master of your ideas; do you know, then, what thoughts you will have in an hour, or in a quarter of an hour?
LUCRETIUS.—I must own that I do not.
POSIDONIUS.—You frequently have ideas in your sleep; you make verses in a dream: Cæsar takes cities: I resolve problems; and hounds pursue the stag in their dreams. Ideas, therefore, come to us independently of our own will; they are given us by a Superior Being.
LUCRETIUS.—In what manner do you mean? Do you suppose that the Supreme Being is continually employed in communicating ideas; or that he created incorporeal substances, which were afterwards capable of forming ideas of themselves, sometimes with the assistance of the senses, and sometimes without it? Are these substances formed at the moment of the animal’s conception? Or are they formed before its conception? Do they wait for bodies, in order to insinuate themselves into them? or are they not lodged there till the animal is capable of receiving them? Or, in fine, is it in the Supreme Being that every animated being sees the ideas of things? What is your opinion?
POSIDONIUS.—When you tell me how our will produces an instantaneous motion in our bodies, how your arm obeys your will, how we receive life, how food