Then doth the Soul want work, and idle sit: And this we Childishness and Dotage call: Yet hath She then a quick and active Wit, If She had stuff and tools to work withal.
For, give her organs fit, and objects fair, Give but the aged man, the young man's sense: Let but MEDEA, ÆSON'S youth repair, And straight She shews her wonted excellence.
As a good harper, stricken far in years, Into whose cunning hands, the gout is fall: All his old crotchets, in his brain he bears, But on his harp, plays ill, or not at all.
But if APOLLO take his gout away, That he, his nimble fingers may apply; APOLLO'S self will envy at his play, And all the world applaud his minstrelsy!
Then Dotage is no weakness of the Mind, But of the Sense; for if the Mind did waste; In _all_ old men, we should this wasting find, When they some certain term of years had past.
But most of them, even to their dying hour, Retain a Mind more lively, quick, and strong, And better use their Understanding Power, Than when their brains were warm, and limbs were young.
For though the body wasted be and weak, And though the leaden form of earth it bears; Yet when we hear that half-dead body speak, We oft are ravished to the heavenly spheres.
Yet say these men, "If all her organs die, Then hath the Soul no power, her Powers to use! So in a sort her Powers extinct do lie, When into Act She cannot them reduce."
"And if her Powers be dead, then what is She? For since from everything, some Powers do spring, And from those Powers some Acts proceeding be: Then kill both Power and Act, and kill the Thing."
Doubtless the Body's death, when once it dies, The Instruments of Sense and Life doth kill; So that She cannot use those faculties, Although their root rest in her substance still.
But as, the Body living, Wit and Will Can judge and choose without the Body's aid, Though on such objects, they are working still, As through the Body's organs are conveyed:
So, when the Body serves her turn no more, And all her Senses are extinct and gone, She can discourse of what She learned before, In heavenly contemplations all alone.
So if one man well on the lute doth play, And have good horsemanship, and learning's skill: Though both his lute and horse we take away; Doth he not keep his former learning still?