Lucretius' Writing on the Fear of Death
At the most basic level of subconscious thought, every living animal possesses a desire to stay alive. Usually, this instinct lays dormant, although in dire situations, we can be led to do unexpected things. In addition to this subconscious drive, there is a socially constructed motivation for fearing death. Thanks to the pervasive nature of religion throughout history, much of humanity has, at some point or another, feared the prospect of eternal damnation and torture during one’s life after death. Although not every religion has a negative aspect of the afterlife, or even any semblance of an afterlife at all, those religions which do contain some such construct receive much more attention in this regard. Throughout history, many academics have countered people’s irrational fear of the unknown by noting that there is no definitive evidence to prove the existence of such a postmortem experience. According to Lucretius, this fundamental fear of death is completely speculative, and wholly illogical; he argues that we have no reason to fear death because there is nothing after death. What makes Lucretius’ argument so significant, is not how he counters religion, but how he bases it upon his own revision of atomism. It is because of this foundation of logical thought that Lucretius’ writing on the nature of death can still be thought of as a sound hypothesis.
Although atomism certainly was not a new philosophy by the time Lucretius wrote, or even by the time of Rome’s ascension to power, the original propositions regarding the nature of matter were not enough to construct a philosophy similar to that presented by Lucretius. Over time, atomism had evolved from a binary view that the world consisted solely of atoms and void, to a more comprehensive and varied picture. According to Leucippean and Democritean atomism, matter is comprised of indeterminately small particles which constantly arrange and rearrange themselves, allowing for more complex structures, like humans, to exist. In On the Nature of Things, Lucretius argues that not only is the whole of the human body (both tangible parts, like organs, and intangible concepts, like the soul) created from distinct types of atoms, but that this is the basis upon which an afterlife may be disproved.
One of the principle tenets of atomism is that the atoms people are comprised of provide the basis for physical sensations we might experience, such as heat, touch, smell, et cetera. Lucretius provides the corollary to this view by noting that without some mechanism for processing these input data, we would not smell things, or might burn our hands in a fire. This cognition of external stimuli is one of the key functions of the soul atoms which permeate our bodies. The soul, Lucretius says, is comprised of four distinct types of atoms: breath, heat, air, and a fourth, unnamed variety, which is more mobile than the other three (3.231). The presence of these soul atoms can be proved by observing a person’s reactions to various ailments; sickness afflicts both the body and the mind, for example, demonstrating that they are intrinsically linked. In addition, because sensation may occur at any point in or on the body, the soul must be distributed completely and evenly throughout oneself.
Atomism says that no atoms are ever created or destroyed, but rather disassemble and move on to other organisms after the host dies, or otherwise no longer needs those atoms. It can be inferred, then, that this exact process happens to the soul, as well as the body. By admitting “that what existed before has perished and what exists now was created now” (3.676), the soul as a cohesive unit is shown to be as fleeting as flesh; after death, both disintegrate into individual atoms. Lucretius likens the body to a vessel, and the soul to a liquid inside, mentioning that “when vessels are shattered you perceive the moisture flowing in all directions and the liquid departing… understand that the soul too is poured out and perishes much more quickly” (3.434). By using this vessel and liquid analogy, Lucretius only makes clearer his theory regarding the soul at the time of death. He even goes so far as to say that blood loss, as from a cut, ‘makes rare’ the soul to a certain degree.
As stated earlier, the soul lies at the core of sensation; without a soul, there is no capacity for feeling or experiencing anything. Therefore, after death, there is no capacity by which a specter could experience anything, pleasant or otherwise. Further qualifying the termination of the soul as occurring concurrently with death, Lucretius states that “as soon as the untroubled quiet of death has taken hold of a person… you cannot tell then that anything has been taken away in appearance, anything in weight” (3.211). Because no weight is lost upon death, the atoms which the soul is comprised of must be weightless and are “very small.”
To those who are still not persuaded to accept death as the unavoidable conclusion to life, Lucretius reminds us that “old things, pushed out by new things, always yield, and one thing must always be built up out of others… Matter is needed so that later generations may grow, and yet they all, once they have finished their life, will follow you… and will pass away” (3.964). Understanding the circle of life is the key to overcoming one’s fear of death. Lucretius even goes so far as to say that “life is a permanent possession of no one, but on loan to all” (3.971); Tim Rice would agree, explaining that “there’s more to see than can ever be seen, more to do than can ever be done.” At the moment during which one dies, according to Lucretius, one is shown the massive expanse of time which came before them as a model for what is to come afterwards; in neither scenario are they physically present. Although this seems daunting, it should not be discomforting; it is merely a reminder of the fleeting nature of life, and that no one can avoid death.
In addition to describing how and why the soul leaves a body at the time of death, Lucretius argues that the soul only arrives and is bonded to the body at the time of birth. Although this seems like somewhat circuitous logic out of context, it is merely a condensed conclusion to his prior argument. The basis for this portion of his argument is derived, once again, from the central tenet of atomism. Because nothing is created or destroyed, the atoms which make up one’s soul must have existed before birth, although the joining of the two only occurs upon entering the world. Only by understanding the ephemeral nature of both the soul and body, Lucretius says, may we come to accept the inevitable.