“Besides we feel that mind to being comes
Along with body, with body grows and ages.
For just as children totter round about
With frames infirm and tender, so there follows
A weakling wisdom in their minds; and then,
Where years have ripened into robust powers,
Counsel is also greater, more increased
The power of mind; thereafter, where already
The body's shattered by master-powers of eld,
And fallen the frame with its enfeebled powers,
Thought hobbles, tongue wanders, and the mind gives way;
All fails, all's lacking at the selfsame time.
Therefore it suits that even the soul's dissolved,
Like smoke, into the lofty winds of air;
Since we behold the same to being come
Along with body and grow, and, as I've taught,
Crumble and crack, therewith outworn by eld.”

—  Lucretius

Book III, lines 445–458 (tr. W. E. Leonard)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)

Original

Praeterea gigni pariter cum corpore et una crescere sentimus pariterque senescere mentem. nam vel ut infirmo pueri teneroque vagantur corpore, sic animi sequitur sententia tenvis. inde ubi robustis adolevit viribus aetas, consilium quoque maius et auctior est animi vis. post ubi iam validis quassatum est viribus aevi corpus et obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus, claudicat ingenium, delirat lingua labat mens, omnia deficiunt atque uno tempore desunt. ergo dissolui quoque convenit omnem animai naturam, ceu fumus, in altas aëris auras; quando quidem gigni pariter pariterque videmus crescere et, ut docui, simul aevo fessa fatisci.

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Lucretius 45
Roman poet and philosopher -94–-55 BC

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