display all the ideas for this combination of texts
6 ideas
| 22731 | It is mad to think that what is useful to us, like lakes and rivers, are gods [Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: To suppose that lakes and rivers, and whatsoever else is of a nature to be useful to us, are gods surpasses the height of lunacy. | |
| From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], I.040) | |
| A reaction: He also points out the what is useful to us decays and changes. Sextus lived in a time when monotheism was becoming dominant. |
| 5722 | For a separated spirit to remain sentient it would need sense organs attached to it [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: If spirit is immortal and can remain sentient when divorced from our body, we must credit it with possession of five senses; but eyes or nostrils or hand or tongue or ears cannot be attached to a disembodied spirit. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.624) | |
| A reaction: This is a powerful argument against immortality. If you are going to see, you must interact with photons; to hear you must respond to compression waves; to smell you must react to certain molecules. Immortality without those would be a bit dull. |
| 5725 | An immortal mind couldn't work harmoniously with a mortal body [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: It is crazy to couple a mortal object with an eternal and suppose that they can work in harmony and mutually interact. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.799) | |
| A reaction: An interesting thought, though not a terrible persuasive argument. A god would indeed be a bit restless if it were chained to a human being, but it would presumably knuckle down to the task if firmly instructed to do it by Zeus. |
| 5720 | Spirit is mortal [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: Spirit is mortal. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.542) | |
| A reaction: This is asserted at an historical moment when immortality is beginning to grip everyone's imagination. |
| 5721 | The mind is very small smooth particles, which evaporate at death [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: Since the substance of the mind is extraordinarily mobile, it must consist of particles exceptionally small and smooth and round, ..so that, when the spirit has escaped from the body, the outside of the limbs appears intact and there is no loss of weight. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.201) | |
| A reaction: Lucretius is wonderfully attentive to interesting evidence. He goes on to compare it to the evaporation of perfume. The fine-grained connections of the brain are not far off what he is proposing. |
| 5723 | If spirit is immortal and enters us at birth, why don't we remember a previous existence? [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: If the spirit is by nature immortal and is slipped into the body at birth, why do we retain no memory of an earlier existence, no impress of antecedent events? | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.670) | |
| A reaction: Plato took the view that we do recall previous existence, as seen in our innate ideas. This problem forced the Christian church into the uncomfortable claim that God creates the soul at conception, but that it then goes on to immortality. |