LUCRETIUS AND HAECKEL I3I 



and should be quoted here: "Another insoluble difficulty faces the 

 athanatist when he asks in what stage of their individual development 

 the disembodied souls will spend their eternal life. Will the new- 

 born infant develop its psychic powers in heaven under the same hard 

 conditions of the 'struggle for life ' which educate men here on earth ? 

 Will the talented youth who has fallen in the wholesale murder of 

 war unfold his rich, unused mental powers in Walhalla ? Will the 

 feeble, childish old man, who has filled the world with the fame of 

 his deeds in the ripeness of his age, live forever in mental decay ? 

 Or will he return to an earlier stage of development ? If the immortal 

 souls in Olympus are to live in a condition of rejuvenescence and per- 

 fectness, then both the stimulus to the formation of personaUty and 

 the interest therein disappear for them."* 



III. The Pathological Argument 



Lucretius: "Moreover we see that even as the body is liable to 

 violent diseases and severe pain, so is the mind to sharp cares and 

 grief and fear; it naturally follows, therefore, that it is its partner in 

 death as well. Again, in diseases of the body the mind often wanders 

 and goes astray; for it loses its reason and drivels in its speech and 

 often in a profound lethargy is carried into deep and never-ending sleep 

 with drooping eyes and head ; out of which it neither hears the voices 

 nor can recognize the faces of those who stand around calling it back 

 to life and bedewing with tears face and cheeks. Therefore you must 

 admit that the mind too dissolves, since the infection of disease reaches 

 to it; for pain and disease are both forgers of death: a truth we have 

 fully learned ere now by the death of many. Again, when the pun- 

 gent strength of wine has entered into a man and its spirit has been 

 infused into and transmitted through his veins, why is it that a heavi- 

 ness of the Hmbs follows along with this ? His legs are hampered 

 as he reels about, his tongue falters, his mind is besotted, his eyes 

 swim, shouting, hiccuping, wranghngs are rife, together with all the 

 other usual concomitants, why is all this if not because the over- 

 powering violence of the wine is wont to disorder the soul within the 

 body? But whenever things can be disordered and hampered, they 



'WR„ 208-0. 



