128 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



has some knowledge of anatomy and physiology."' To Lucretius 

 death is a dissolution of the body once and for all, unless by mere hap 

 the same fortuitous combination of atoms recur in infinite time; but 

 with that combination we should have no concern, for the train of 

 self-consciousness is broken.^ Our very bodies are needed as mate- 

 rial for after-generations to grow, and nature must have the atoms 

 composing our frames. "Thus one thing will never cease to rise out 

 of another, and life is granted to none in fee-simple, to all in usufruct. "^ 

 c) A purely immaterial soul (for which some thinkers find a certain 

 analogy in recent conceptions of ether in the physical world) neither 

 of our writers could admit any more than the form discussed above 

 under a. Haeckel dismisses it formally, Lucretius by implication.'* 

 IV. The Argument or "Emotional Craving" 



All arguments advanced by athanatists not capable of direct, defi- 

 nite rational treatment, such as the teleological and cosmological, are 

 summarily thrust out by both men; but neither is able to pass in 

 silence the deep-rooted feeUng of our human hearts that final sepa- 

 ration from those we love is so great an evil that it can not be a part 

 of the order of things. The passages quoted will serve at the same 

 time to make clear the greater dignity and humanity of the olden poet 

 whose strain so often is "fraught too deep with pain." "'Now no 

 more shall thy house admit thee with glad welcome, nor a most vir- 

 tuous wife and sweet children run to be the first to snatch kisses and 

 touch thy heart with a silent joy. No more mayst thou be prosper- 

 ous in thy doings, a safeguard to thine own. One disastrous day 

 has taken from thee luckless man in luckless wise all the many prizes 

 of fife.' This do men say; but add not thereto 'and now no longer 

 does any craving for these things beset thee withal. ' For if they could 

 rightly perceive this in thought and follow up the thought in words, 

 they would release themselves from great distress and apprehension 

 of mind. 'Thou, even as now thou art, sunk in the sleep of death, 

 shalt continue so to be all time to come, freed from all distressful pains ; 

 but we with a sorrow that would not be sated wept for thee, when, 



» WR., 196, ^De R. N., Ill, 964 seq. 



' De R. N. Ill, 847 seq. *WR., 199-200. 



