18 Nor can a man of passions judge aright,
Except his mind be from all passions free:
Nor can a judge his office well acquit,
If he possess'd of either party be.
19 If, lastly, this quick power a body were,
Were it as swift as in the wind or fire,
Whose atoms do the one down sideways bear,
And the other make in pyramids aspire;
20 Her nimble body yet in time must move,
And not in instants through all places slide:
But she is nigh and far, beneath, above,
In point of time, which thought cannot divide;
21 She's sent as soon to China as to Spain;
And thence returns as soon as she is sent:
She measures with one time, and with one pain.
An ell of silk, and heaven's wide-spreading tent.
22 As then the soul a substance hath alone,
Besides the body in which she's confined;
So hath she not a body of her own,
But is a spirit, and immaterial mind.
23 Since body and soul have such diversities,
Well might we muse how first their match began;
But that we learn, that He that spread the skies,
And fix'd the earth, first form'd the soul in man.
24 This true Prometheus first made man of earth,
And shed in him a beam of heavenly fire;
Now in their mothers' wombs, before their birth,
Doth in all sons of men their souls inspire.
25 And as Minerva is in fables said,
From Jove, without a mother, to proceed;
So our true Jove, without a mother's aid,
Doth daily millions of Minervas breed.
[1] That it cannot be a body.