Along the path between these events, all is in flux. The mind certainly is. For all our exalted sense of ourselves as spiritual beings, our conscious selves are prone to being befuddled by alcohol or enfeebled by disease. Even the wisest sage can lose her reason in a flash if a stone falls on her head. Lucretius and his ultimate source, Democritus, observed how mind and body alike are affected by the senses and events throughout life; they reminded us that, one day, each of us will come to an end in the gentle, silent dissolution of our atoms. Writers through the sixteenth and seventeenth
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