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 However much The trunk be mangled, with the limbs lopped off, The soul withdrawn and taken from the limbs, Still lives the trunk and draws the vital air.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. THE SOUL IS MORTAL 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, Sought after long, discovered with sweet toil. But under one name I'd have thee yoke them both; And when, for instance, I shall speak of soul, Teaching the same to be but mortal, think Thereby I'm speaking also of the mind-- Since both are one, a substance inter-joined. First, then, since I have taught how soul exists A subtle fabric, of particles minute, Made up from atoms smaller much than those Of water's liquid damp, or fog, or smoke, So in mobility it far excels, More prone to move, though strook by lighter cause Even moved by images of smoke or fog-- As where we view, when in our sleeps we're lulled, The altars exhaling steam and smoke aloft-- For, beyond doubt, these apparitions come To us from outward. Now, then, since thou seest, Their liquids depart, their waters flow away, When jars are shivered, and since fog and smoke Depart into the winds away, believe The soul no less is shed abroad and dies More quickly far, more quickly is dissolved Back to its primal bodies, when withdrawn From out man's members it has gone away. For, sure, if body (container of the same Like as a jar), when shivered from some cause, And rarefied by loss of blood from veins, Cannot for longer hold the soul, how then Thinkst thou it can be held by any air-- A stuff much rarer than our bodies be?