"--that "death is nothing to us, for that which is dissolved is
devoid of sensation, and that which is devoid of sensation is nothing to
us."[818] Starting with the fixed determination to prove that

"Death is nothing, and naught after death,"

he will not permit any mental phenomena to suggest to him the idea of an
incorporeal spiritual substance. Matter, under any form known to
Epicurus, is confessedly insufficient to explain sensation and thought;
a "nameless something" must be _supposed_. But may not "that principle
which _lies entirely hid, and remains in secret_"[819]--and about which
even Epicurus does not know any thing--be a spiritual, an _immaterial_
principle? For aught that he knows it may as properly be called
"_spirit_" as matter. May not _sensation_ and _cognition_ be the result
of the union of matter and spirit; and if so, may not their mutual
affections, their common sympathies, be the necessary conditions of
sensation and cognition in the present life? A reciprocal relation
between body and mind appears in all mental phenomena. A certain
proportion in this relation is called mental health. A deviation from it
is termed disease. This proportion is by no means an equilibrium, but
the perfect adaptation of the body, without injury to its integrity, to
the purposes of the mind. And if this be so, all the arguments of
materialism fall to the ground.

[Footnote 817: Lucretius, "On the Nature of Things," bk. i. l. 100-118.]

[Footnote 818: Diogenes Laertius, Maxim 2, in "Lives of the
Philosophers," bk. x. ch. xxxi.]

[Footnote 819: Lucretius, "On the Nature of Things," bk. iii. l.
275-280.]

The concluding portion of the third book, in which Lucretius discourses
on _death_, is a mournful picture of the condition of the heathen mind
before Christianity "brought life and immortality fully to light." It
comes to us, like a voice from the grave of two thousand years, to prove
they were "without hope." To be delivered from the fear of future
retribution, they would sacrifice the hope of an immortal life. To
extintinguish guilt they would annihilate the soul. The only way in
which Lucretius can console man in prospect of death is, by reminding
him that he will _escape the ills of life_.

"'But thy dear home shall never greet thee more!
No more the best of wives!--thy babes beloved,
Whose haste half-met thee, emulous to snatch
The dulcet kiss that roused thy secret soul,
Again