Boyer, The Undying

I think of the medie­val Islamic phi­lo­so­pher Avicenna’s floa­ting man, who, denied all sen­sa­tion, still knows, as proof of the soul, that he exists.1 I am not sure I believe him. A bet­ter ans­wer is found in the Roman poet Lucretius’s argu­ment in his epic poem, De rerum natu­ra, that we can die inch by inch. Every cell is a king­dom of both sub­stance and spi­rit, and any king­dom can be over­thrown. Our life force, like our flesh, never seems to issue away from us all at once. Anyone who has been half dead can attest to this. What we call our soul can die in small quan­ti­ties, just as our bodies can be worn, ampu­ta­ted, and poi­so­ned away, bit by bit.2 The lost parts of our souls are no more repla­ceable than the lost parts of our bodies, life incre­men­tal­ly lif­ting from life, just like that. And there we are, most­ly dead, but still requi­red to go to work.