Since all these proofs have shown, these reasons told,
’Tis with the body born, grows strong, and old.
—CREECH.
POSIDONIUS.—These, to be sure, are very fine verses; but do you thereby inform me of the nature of the soul?
LUCRETIUS.—No; I only give you its history, and I reason with probability.
POSIDONIUS.—Where is the probability of a father’s communicating to his son the faculty of thinking?
LUCRETIUS.—Do you not daily see children resembling their fathers in their inclinations, as well as in their features?
POSIDONIUS.—But does not a father, in begetting his son, act as a blind agent? Does he pretend, when he enjoys his wife, to make a soul, or to make thoughts? Do either of them know the manner in which a child is formed in the mother’s womb? Must we not, in this case, have recourse to a superior cause, as well as in all the other operations of nature which we have examined? Must you not see, if you are in earnest, that men give themselves nothing, but are under the hand of an absolute master?
LUCRETIUS.—If you know more of the matter than I do, tell me what the soul is.
POSIDONIUS.—I do not pretend to know what it is more than you. Let us endeavor to enlighten each other. Tell me, first, what is vegetation.