Lo, change the rivers, the fronds, the gladsome pastures Into the cattle, the cattle their nature change Into our bodies, and from our body, oft Grow strong the powers and bodies of wild beasts And mighty-winged birds. Thus nature changes All foods to living frames, and procreates From them the senses of live creatures all, In manner about as she uncoils in flames Dry logs of wood and turns them all to fire.
And seest not, therefore, how it matters much After what order are set the primal germs, And with what other germs they all are mixed, And what the motions that they give and get?
But now, what is't that strikes thy sceptic mind, Constraining thee to sundry arguments Against belief that from insensate germs The sensible is gendered?- Verily, 'Tis this: that liquids, earth, and wood, though mixed, Are yet unable to gender vital sense.
And, therefore, 'twill be well in these affairs This to remember: that I have not said Senses are born, under conditions all, From all things absolutely which create Objects that feel; but much it matters here Firstly, how small the seeds which thus compose The feeling thing, then, with what shapes endowed, And lastly what they in positions be, In motions, in arrangements. Of which facts Naught we perceive in logs of wood and clods;And yet even these, when sodden by the rains, Give birth to wormy grubs, because the bodies Of matter, from their old arrangements stirred By the new factor, then combine anew In such a way as genders living things.
Next, they who deem that feeling objects can From feeling objects be create, and these, In turn, from others that are wont to feel . . . . . .
When soft they make them; for all sense is linked With flesh, and thews, and veins- and such, we see, Are fashioned soft and of a mortal frame.
Yet be't that these can last forever on:
They'll have the sense that's proper to a part, Or else be judged to have a sense the same As that within live creatures as a whole.
But of themselves those parts can never feel, For all the sense in every member back 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?