Again, why is't there goes Impetuous rage with lion's breed morose, And cunning with foxes, and to deer why given The ancestral fear and tendency to flee, And why in short do all the rest of traits Engender from the very start of life In the members and mentality, if not Because one certain power of mind that came From its own seed and breed waxes the same Along with all the body? But were mind Immortal, were it wont to change its bodies, How topsy-turvy would earth's creatures act! The Hyrcan hound would flee the onset oft Of antlered stag, the scurrying hawk would quake Along the winds of air at the coming dove, And men would dote, and savage beasts be wise; For false the reasoning of those that say Immortal mind is changed by change of body-- For what is changed dissolves, and therefore dies. For parts are re-disposed and leave their order; Wherefore they must be also capable Of dissolution through the frame at last, That they along with body perish all. But should some say that always souls of men Go into human bodies, I will ask: How can a wise become a dullard soul? And why is never a child's a prudent soul? And the mare's filly why not trained so well As sturdy strength of steed? We may be sure They'll take their refuge in the thought that mind Becomes a weakling in a weakling frame. Yet be this so, 'tis needful to confess The soul but mortal, since, so altered now Throughout the frame, it loses the life and sense It had before. Or how can mind wax strong Coequally with body and attain The craved flower of life, unless it be The body's colleague in its origins? Or what's the purport of its going forth From aged limbs?--fears it, perhaps, to stay, Pent in a crumbled body? Or lest its house, Outworn by venerable length of days, May topple down upon it? But indeed For an immortal perils are there none. Again, at parturitions of the wild And at the rites of Love, that souls should stand Ready hard by seems ludicrous enough-- Immortals waiting for their mortal limbs In numbers innumerable, contending madly Which shall be first and chief to enter in!-- Unless perchance among the souls there be Such treaties stablished that the first to come Flying along, shall enter in the first, And that they make no rivalries of strength!