For, giue her organs fit, and obiects faire; Giue but the aged man, the young man's sense; Let but _Medea_, _Æson's_ youth repaire,[152] And straight she shewes her wonted excellence. As a good harper stricken farre in yeares, Into whose cunning hand the gowt is fall;[153] All his old crotchets in his braine he beares, But on his harpe playes ill, or not at all. But if _Apollo_ takes his gowt away, That hee his nimble fingers may apply; _Apollo's_ selfe will enuy at his play, And all the world applaud his minstralsie. Then _dotage_ is no weaknesse of the mind, But of the _Sense_; for if the mind did waste, In all old men we should this wasting find, When they some certaine terme of yeres had past: But most of them, euen to their dying howre, Retaine a mind more liuely, quicke, and strong; And better vse their vnderstanding power, Then when their braines were warm, and lims were yong. For, though the body wasted be and weake, And though the leaden forme of earth it beares; Yet when we heare that halfe-dead body speake, We oft are rauisht to the heauenly _spheares_. [Footnote 151: Foolish. G.] [Footnote 152: Ovid, _Met._ vii. 163, 250 _et alibi_. G.] [Footnote 153: _Sic_: and also onward. G.] OBJECTION II. Yet say these men, If all her organs die, Then hath the _soule_ no power her powers to vse; So, in a sort, her powers extinct doe lie, When vnto _act_ shee cannot them reduce. And if her powers be dead, then what is shee? For sith from euery thing some powers do spring, And from those powers, some _acts_ proceeding bee, Then kill both _power_ and _act_, and kill the _thing_. ANSWERE. _Doubtlesse_ the bodie's death when once it dies, The instruments of sense and life doth kill; So that she cannot vse those faculties, Although their root rest in her substance still. But (as the body liuing) _Wit_ and _Will_ Can _iudge_ and _chuse_, without the bodie's ayde; Though on such obiects they are working still, As through the bodie's organs are conuayde: So, when the body serues her turne no more, And all her _Senses_ are extinct and gone, She can discourse of what she learn'd before, In heauenly contemplations, all alone. So, if one man well on a lute doth play, And haue good horsemanship, and Learning's skill; Though both his lute and horse we take away, Doth he not keep his former learning still? He keepes it doubtlesse, and can vse it to[o]; And doth both th' other _skils_ in power retaine; And can of both the proper actions doe, If with his lute or horse he meet againe.