Death Is Nothing To Us

Lucretius Book 3:

• [3:94] The mind is no less a part of a human than his hands, eyes, or feet, yet some argue that the mind does not exist in any particular part of the body, but in a "harmony" of the whole. This is wrong, and we know that the mind can feel pleasure while the foot feels pain, and that not every part of the body has an equal part to play in sustaining life.
• [3:130] Let the Greek musicians keep their Harmony, because the mind and soul are a part of man.
• [3:136] The mind and soul are of a single nature, and are seated in the breast, and the rest of the soul is spread throughout the body and obeys the understanding. The mind sometimes feels pain or pleasure on its own, when the rest of the body is not roused by any fresh feeling, but the mind can affect the rest of the body.

Lucretius Book 3:

• [3:161] The nature of the mind and soul is bodily, which we know by how it is affected by things that touch us, such as the blows of weapons.
• [3:177] The mind is very fine and composed of tiny particles that move quickly.
• [3:208] The mind is also thin and might be contained in a very small place if it could be gathered together, but when one dies nothing leaves the body that sight or weight could test.
• [3:231] The mind is thin and light but it is not simple. It has much of air in it, as well as heat and breath, but these alone are not sufficient to bring sensation or thought. The mind has a further nature that gives rise to its motions.
• [3:258] The heat and air and breath mingle together to create one nature, from which motion and sensation first arises in the body.
• [3:288] The temperature of the air in the mind is related to how one thinks, and those living things with more heat have a more fiery heart and passionate mind, such as lions. Other living beings such as deer have more of cold wind, while oxen have more calm air.
• [3:307] Men are similar to the animals just described. Much training can lead men to a similar culture, but it cannot eliminate the original nature of the mind. Some men are more prone to anger, some more prone to fear, some more passive than is right. These traces cannot be eliminated, but reason has the power to dispel so much of the original nature that nothing hinders us from living a life worthy of the gods.

Lucretius Book 3:

• [3:323] The Soul both protects and is protected by the body, and they cannot be separated without their destruction.
• [3:337] The body is never born by itself, nor does it grow alone, and nor does it linger on after death, as it cannot survive separation of the soul. The body and soul are linked from the womb, and they cannot survive being separated.
• [3:350] The soul has no sensation of its own, and when the soul dies, the body is utterly deprived of sensation.
• [3:359] The mind does not see on its own, but must use the eyes, and the eyes are not merely openings as are doors.
• [3:370] We must reject the teaching of Democritus that the atoms of the soul and body alternate with each other, because the particles of the soul are far fewer in number than the particles of the rest of the body. We do not immediately feel dust, or mist, or spider webs, or insects on our skin, because many atoms of the body must be stirred before the mind becomes aware of such things.
• [3:396] The mind is more the keeper of life than is the soul, and so long as the mind is intact the body can survive loss of many of its parts and the parts of his soul that are in those lost parts. This is similar to how the eye can be harmed in many places but can still see so long as the pupil is intact, but with loss of the pupil comes loss of sight.
• [3:417] So that we may see that mind and soul have birth and death, understand that mind and soul are as one, and compose a single thing.
• [3:425] The soul can be scattered more quickly than water or clouds or smoke, and since the body is the vessel of the soul, the soul is scattered when the body is shattered, as the soul can certainly not be restrained by the surrounding air.
• [3:445] It is natural that the mind is dissolved like smoke upon the death of the body, since the mind is born with it, grows with it, and becomes weary and worn with age with it.
• [3:459] This follows also from how we see that the mind suffers from diseases just like the body.
• [3:476] Another example of the linkage of mind and body is seen from how wine affects both.
• [3:487] Likewise both the mind and body can be seized by the violent convulsions of disease, and a sick person loses their mind, until the mind returns when the sickness is gone.
• [3:510] The mind can be cured with medicine just like the body, and this too shows us how they are linked, and this happens due to transfer of particles, which would not happen if the mind were immortal. Thus so surely is the truth seen to run counter to false reasoning, and to shut off the retreat of error, that it refutes the falsehood coming and going.
• [3:526] Sometimes men die little by little, with their toes and feet and legs first, as death moves step by step through the body. This slow death over time shows that the soul too is mortal, as the soul cannot contract itself into one part of the body.
• [3:548] Since the mind resides in one part of man, like the eye or the nose, the mind cannot survive separation from the body any more than can the eye or the nose.
• [3:558] Just as the eye cannot see anything if torn from the body, so the mind cannot give life separated from the body.
• [3:580] The body cannot endure loss of the soul without decaying, and in so decaying it can no longer contain the soul.
• [3:592] We see that men can be shocked and fall limp and seem to almost die, so that a little more shock would in fact bring death. If so, why doubt that the soul cannot survive outside the body for all time, or even for a moment?
• [3:607] If our mind were immortal it would leave the body as a snake leaves its skin, but instead as we die we feel the senses dissolving in their own place, not leaving.
• [3:615] The mind is never begotten in hands or feet, but is assigned to its normal place by nature, which it can never leave, just as a flame never resides in a stream or cold in fire.
• [3:624] If the soul is immortal and can feel outside the body, it must be endowed with five senses, and yet neither the eyes nor ears nor nose can exist apart from the body, and the soul cannot either.
• [3:634] We feel the sensation of life present in the whole body, and when the body is cut in half, beyond doubt the soul would be too, and what can be cut into pieces surely is not immortal.
• [3:642] Soldiers cut apart by chariots lose limbs instantly, and those limbs no longer feel, and we sometimes do not know they are gone.
• [3:657] Do we say that a snake when cut apart had a soul in each piece? If so, that would mean one body had many souls, but what can be cut into many parts is not immortal.
• [3:670] If the soul is immortal and enters the body at birth, why does it not remember being alive before? If it does not remember, then the soul is essentially new, and the old one is dead.
• [3:679] If the soul enters the body at birth, it would not be natural for the soul to be seen to grow with the body. We must therefore not think of souls as without a birth, or released from the law of death, or that they can unravel themselves from intertwining with the body.
• [3:698] Even if the soul were grafted within us from outside, that which is grafted in and permeates perishes and forms a new nature, so again we see that the soul neither without birth nor without death.
• [3:713] Are seeds of the soul left in a dead body? If so, they cannot be immortal, since some of the soul has left the body. And if the soul has left the body entirely, why is it that corpses teem with worms? There is no reason that souls should make homes for themselves in the body, because if they are outside the body they suffer no disease or hunger. Souls do not make bodies for themselves, nor are they grafted into ready-made bodies.
• [3:741] Why do lions act like lions and foxes like foxes and deer like deer? It is because the power of mind is determined by the body and grows with the body, but if the soul were immortal then a hawk might be afraid of a dove, or men be witless and the wild beasts be wise.
• [3:754] What is changed is dissolved and passes away, and soul that changes bodies likewise is changed and the old passes away.
• [3:760] If souls are immortal and pass to new bodies, why are children not born wise, and why does a foal not have the strength of a horse? Again, a soul that changes loses its former self.
• [3:769] If the soul were immortal why would it desire to be release from aged limbs? Why would it fear to be shut up in a decaying body? An immortal thing knows no such dangers.
• [3:776] It is laughable to think that souls stand in line waiting for mortals to be born so they can inhabit them, or that they jostle in line for better position, or that they make agreements on which body to inhabit.
• [3:784] Trees cannot exist in the sky, nor clouds in water, nor the mind without a body.
• [3:800] What is more foolish than to think that the mortal should be linked in union with the immortal?
• [3:806] If things are everlasting they must be able to survive assaults, such as can the atoms, or be exempt from blows, as is the void, or else because there is no space around it into which it can be broken up, or from which an outside force can enter in, as is the case with the universe as a whole.
• [3:819] But we see that disease and cares wear out the soul, so it cannot be everlasting like the atoms or the void or the universe as a whole.]] [3:323] The Soul both protects and is protected by the body, and they cannot be separated without their destruction.

Lucretius Book Three [560] Munro:

"Therefore, again and again I say, when the enveloping body has been all broken up and the vital airs have been forced out, you must admit that the senses of the mind and the soul are dissolved, since the cause of destruction is one and inseparable for both body and soul."

Lucretius Book Three [679] Munro:

"Wherefore, again and again I say, we must believe souls to be neither without a birth nor exempted from the law of death; for we must not believe that they could have been so completely united with our bodies, if they found their way into them from without, nor since they are so closely interwoven with them, does it appear that they can get out unharmed and unloose themselves unscathed from all the sinews and bones and joints."

Epicurus' Principal Doctrine 2

Bailey: "Death is nothing to us, for that which is dissolved is without sensation; and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us."

Epicurus to Menoeceus Line 125 Bailey:

"For there is nothing terrible in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living. So that the man speaks but idly who says that he fears death not because it will be painful when it comes, but because it is painful in anticipation. For that which gives no trouble when it comes is but an empty pain in anticipation. So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more."

Lucretius:

• [3:830] Death then is nothing to us, nor does it concern us, as the mind is mortal, and just as we felt no pain before we were born, even in the Punic Wars, we will feel nothing after we are dead.
• [3:843] Even if the mind and soul have feeling after death, still that is nothing to us, for we are formed by the combination of body and soul, and even if our bodies were gathered together again by time, even that would not concern us, because we would have no memory of our former selves. When we think about the endless ages past, we can well imagine that perhaps our same atoms were often placed in the same positions in the distant past and yet we cannot remember any such thing.
• [3:862] If we are to feel grief and pain we must be there to experience it, and since we are not, we cannot be wretched, any more than if we had never been born, once we are dead.
• [3:870] A man who fears what happens to him after death presumes that he is still there to experience those things, and thus he regrets that he was born, because he does not realize that he will not be there to experience his loss, and that he should not care no matter how well or ill his body might be treated after death.
• [3:894] People think about the pleasures they will no longer experience, but they don't consider that after death they will no longer want those things. If people saw this clearly, they would free themselves from great anguish and fear or mind.
• [3:904] And if they saw that the soul dies with the body they would also not experience unending grief at the loss of a loved one, because we would know that the loved one had been released from every pain and sorrow, and that this is no cause for endless lamentation.
• [3:912] Men often also lament that the time of food and drink and enjoyment will soon be over, never to be called back, but they do not realize that when they are dead they will no longer want these things, and they will be in what we can consider to be an endless sleep, and the experience of death does not even include the shock we experience when we awaken startled from sleep.

Lucretius Book 3:

• [3:931] Imagine that Nature speaks to us and says that if our life has been so pleasant that we fear losing it, why not look at death as when we leave a party having been filled with the banquet of life, and then embrace a rest that knows no care? And if your life has been terrible, why wish for more of it? Especially since things will be in the future as they were in the past, and nature has nothing new to offer.
• [3:952] Nature can justly rebuke an old man who laments leaving life, because such a man has enjoyed all life has to give, yet continues to want what he does not have, and forgets the gifts at hand, and uncompleted and unenjoyed his life has slipped from his hands. Such a man should give up these things so ill-fitted for his years and yield them to youth, as one must.
• [3:972] The old always must give way to the new, as it must: life is granted to none for freehold, to all on lease. Look back at the ages before we were born and see how they are nothing to us; such is the time after death; it is a rest more calm than any sleep.
• [3:978] The horrors we are told about in stories, such as the rock over Tantalus or the birds eating Tityos or the fear of the gods or the Sisyphus always seeking office these are things we actually suffer in life.
• [3:1003] The enjoyment of each season that comes around never fills us, and we are like the maidens who cannot fill their leaky vessels.
• [3:1011] Monsters like Cerberus and Tartarus do not exist, but fear of punishment for the misdeeds of life torture us even worse. Here on earth the life of fools becomes a hell.
• [3:1024] Remember too that the great men of the past Ancus, the Scipios, Democritus, and even Epicurus himself -all of them died too, and if they died you who waste your time in sleep and dreams and fears and wandering can face death too.
• [3:1053] If men would learn what causes the fears that oppress them, they would not ceaseless want new things or wish to change places, as if those could ease their fears. They would not run from place to place, as if to a house afire, and seek to escape themselves. If he saw things clearly everyone would leave what they are doing and put first the study of the nature of things, since it is our state for all eternity, and not just for an hour, that is in issue.
• [3:1076] Death is inevitable, and spending our time amidst the same things does not bring new pleasures, and we constantly seek new things, and we cannot shorten the length of death. Live as long as we might, death still awaits us, and our deaths will be just as long as those who perished many months or years before.

Principal Doctrine 04.

Pain does not last continuously in the flesh, but the acutest pain is there for a very short time, and even that which just exceeds the pleasure in the flesh does not continue for many days at once. But chronic illnesses permit a predominance of pleasure over pain in the flesh.

As Thucydides ended his description of the Plague of Athens, which Emily Austin thinks Lucretius may have intended as the end of his poem:

53 Nor was this the only form of lawless extravagance which owed its origin to the plague. Men now coolly ventured on what they had formerly done in a corner, and not just as they pleased, seeing the rapid transitions produced by persons in prosperity suddenly dying and those who before had nothing succeeding to their property. So they resolved to spend quickly and enjoy themselves, regarding their lives and riches as alike things of a day. Perseverance in what men called honour was popular with none, it was so uncertain whether they would be spared to attain the object; but it was settled that present enjoyment, and all that contributed to it, was both honourable and useful. Fear of gods or law of man there was none to restrain them. As for the first, they judged it to be just the same whether they worshipped them or not, as they saw all alike perishing; and for the last, no one expected to live to be brought to trial for his offences, but each felt that a far severer sentence had been already passed upon them all and hung ever over their heads, and before this fell it was only reasonable to enjoy life a little .

VS14. We are born once and cannot be born twice, but for all time must be no more. But you, who are not master of tomorrow, postpone your happiness. Life is wasted in procrastination, and each one of us dies while occupied.

VS30. Some men, throughout their lives, spend their time gathering together the means of life, for they do not see that the draught swallowed by all of us at birth is a draught of death.

VS38. He is a little man in all respects who has many good reasons for quitting life.

VS41. We must laugh and philosophize at the same time, and do our household duties, and employ our other faculties, and never cease proclaiming the sayings of the true philosophy.

VS45. The study of nature does not make men productive of boasting or bragging, nor apt to display that culture which is the object of rivalry with the many, but high-spirited and self-sufficient, taking pride in the good things of their own minds and not of their circumstances.

• After we die our bodies may linger for a while, but our consciousness forever ceases to exist, and therefore we no longer feel any pleasure of pain. That is the main sense in which "death is nothing to us," which means essentially "the state of being dead is a state of nothingness for us."
• While the state of being dead causes brings no pain to us, as we no longer exist, there are aspects of death which are of great relevance to the way we live our lives and which we should take into account every day.
• The fact of death means life is short and therefore we must accomplish all that we wish to accomplish while we live.
• The time and manner of our deaths, to the extent those are within our control, should be managed to maximize pleasure and minimize pain.
• The fact that we will not be punished after death frees us of fear of punishment by those who cite the supernatural as sources of punishment.
• The fact that we are inevitably going to die makes us free to be strong in the face of something that we cannot change.